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MISSY. -Page 50. 


9 


I 



More 


Bed-Time Stories. 

BY 

j 

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON, 

AUTHOR OF “ BED-TIME STORIES,” AND “ SOME WOMEN’S HEARTS.” 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ADDIE LEDYARD. 

0 



BOSTON: 




/ 


ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1875. 


» 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 


Cambridge : 

Press of John Wilson &= Son, 


TO MY DAUGHTER FLORENCE . 

[after a twelvemonth.] 


" More Bed-Time Stories Sweetest Heart , 
A nd all to you belong : 

All that I have and am, my dear, 

I give you with ?ny song. 

All that I have and aih, my dear, 

Is not too much to pay 

As tribute to the fair, young queen 
Who rules my heart to-day ; 

As tribute to the dear, blue eyes , 

And to the golden hair, 

And sweet, new grace of maidenhood 
That wraps you everywhere, — 

The shy surprise of maidenhood \ 

That still turns back to hear 

The tales I tell at shut of day : — 

So these are yours, my dear . 


L. C. M. 


CONTENTS, 


PAGE 

«/ Against Wind and Tide 5 

Blue Sky and White Clouds 20 

The Cousin from Boston 34 

Missy 50 

The Head Boy of Eagleheight School ... 68 

Agatha’s Lonely Days 82 

Thin Ice 100 

My Lost Sister : A Confession . . . . \ . . 114 

What came to Olive Haygarth 128 

Uncle Jack 143 

Nobody’s Child 159 

My Little Gentleman . 175 

Ruthy’s Country . . 191 

Job Golding’s Christmas . . 210 

« 

My Comforter 224 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


AGAINST WIND AND TIDE. 


ACK RAMSDALE was a bad boy. He had 



been a bad boy so long that secretly he was 
rather tired of it ; but he really did not know how 
to help himself. It was his reputation, and it is a 
curious thing how naturally we all live up to our 
reputations ; that is to say, we do the things which 
are expected of us. There is a deal of homely 
sense in the old proverb, “ Give a dog a bad name 
and hang him.” Give a boy a bad name, and he is 
reasonably sure to deserve one. Not but that Jack 
Ramsdale had fairly earned his bad name. His 
mother had died before he was old enough to 
remember her, so he had never known what a 
home was. Once, when his father was unusually 


6 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


good-natured, he had asked him some questions 
about his mother. 

“ She was one of God’s saints, if ever there 
was one,” the man answered, half reluctantly. 
“ Everybody wondered that she took up with me, 
but maybe it was because she saw I needed her 
more than anybody else did. She might have 
made a different man of me if she’d lived ; at 
least, I’ve always thought so. I never drank so 
much when she was alive but what I kept a com- 
fortable home over her head. But when she was 
gone, it didn’t appear to me there was any thing 
left to live for. I lacked comfort sorely, and I 
don’t say but what I’ve sought for it in by-paths, 
— by and forbidden paths, as she used to say.” 

“ I wish I could ha’ seen her,” said Jack. 

“ She was a dreadful motherly creetur, and was 
always hangin’ over you. Cold nights I’ve known 
her get up half-a-dozen times, often, to see if the 
clothes was all up over your shoulders ; and some- 
times I’ve seen her stand there looking down at 
you in the biting cold till I thought she’d freeze ; 
but *1 didn’t dare to say any thing, for her lips were 


AGAINST WIND AND TIDE. 


7 


movin’, and I knew she was prayin’ for you. She 
was a prayin’ woman, your mother was. I used 
to think her prayers would save both of us.” 

“ I can’t make out how she looked,” Jack per- 
sisted. He was so anxious to hear something 
about this dead mother who had loved him so. 
Ever since she died, he had been knocked round 
from pillar to post, as they say, with his father: 
Sam Ramsdale was good help, as all the farmers 
knew, when he was sober ; but he was not relia- 
ble, and then he had the disadvantage of always 
being incumbered with the boy, whom he took 
with him everywhere, — an unkempt, undisciplined 
little fellow whom no one liked. Now, as his 
father talked, it seemed to him so strange a thing 
to think that some one used to stand beside his 
bed in cold winter nights and pray for him, that 
he could hardly believe it ; and he said again, out 
of his desolate longing, — 

“ I wish I could ha’ seen how she looked.” 

“ I don’t suppose folks would ha’ said she was 
much to look at.” His father spoke, in a musing 
sort of way. u She was a little pale slip of a 


8 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


woman, with soft yellow hair droopin’ about her 
white face, and eyes as blue as them blue flowers 
you picked up along the road. But there, I can’t 
talk about her, and I ain’t a goin’ to, what’s more ; 
and don’t you ever ask me again ! ” 

From that time Jack never dared to ask any 
more questions about his mother, but all through 
his troublesome, turbulent boyhood he remem- 
bered the meagre outlines of the story which had 
been told him. No matter how bad he had been 
through the day, the nights were few when he 
failed to think how once a pale slip of a woman, 
with soft yellow hair around her white face, and 
eyes blue as the blue gentians, had bent above his 
slumbers and said prayers for him. 

When he was ten years old his father died in 
the poor-house. Drink had enfeebled his constitu- 
tion; a sudden cold did the rest. There were a 
few weeks of terrible suffering, and then the end 
came. Jack was with him to the last. There was 
nowhere else for him to be, and the father liked to 
have him in his sight. One day, just before the 
end, when they were all alone, the man called the 
boy to his bedside. 


AGAINST WIND AND TIDE. 


9 


“I can’t tell you to follow my example, Jack ; 
that’s the shame of it. I’ve got to hold myself up 
as a warnin’, and not as an example. Just you 
steer as clear o’ my ways as you can ; but remem- 
ber that your mother was a prayin’ woman. I 
s’pose nobody’d believe it, Jack; but since I’ve 
been lyin’ here I’ve kinder felt nearer to her than 
I ever did before since she died. Seems as if I 
could a’most hear her prayin’ for me ; and I think, 
by times, that the God she lived so close to won’t 
say no. It’s the ’leventh hour, Jack, the ’leventh 
hour, I know that as well as anybody ; but she 
used to sing a hymn about while the lamp holds 
out to burn. When I get there I shall get rid of 
this awful thirst for drink. It’s been an awful 
thirst; no hunger that I know of can match it; 
but I shall get rid of that when this old body goes 
to pieces. And what does a Saviour mean, if it 
ain’t that He’ll save us from our sins if we ask 
Him?” 

As he said these last words he seemed sinking 
into a sort of stupor, but he started out of it to 
say once more, — 


10 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


“Never follow my example, Jack, boy. Re- 
member your mother was a prayin’ woman.” 

Those were the last connected words any one 
ever heard him speak. After that the night came 
on, — the double night of darkness and of death. 
Once or twice the woman who acted as nurse, 
bending over him, heard him mutter, “ The 
’leventh hour, Jack ! ” and afterwards she won- 
dered whether it was a presentiment, for it was 
just at eleven o’clock that he died. 

Jack had been sent to bed a little before, and 
when he got up in the morning, he knew that he 
was all alone in the world. 

After the funeral Deacon Small took him home. 
He wouldn’t be of much use for two or three 
years to come, the deacon said. Maybe he could 
drive up the cows, and ride the horse to plough, 
and scare the crows away from the corn, but he 
couldn’t earn his salt for a number o’ years to 
come. However, somebody must take him, and 
he guessed he would. It would be a good spell 
before the “ creetur ” would come of age, and the 
last part of the time he might be smart enough to 
pay off old scores. 


AGAINST WIND AND TIDE. 


11 


But surely Jack Ramsdale must have eaten more 
salt than ever boy of ten ate before if he did not 
work enough for it, for it was Jadk here, and Jack 
there, all day long. Jack did everybody’s errands ; 
Jack drew Mrs. Small’s baby-grandchild in its 
little covered wagon; Jack scoured the knives; 
Jack brought the wood; Jack picked berries; 
Jack weeded flower-beds. From being an idle 
little chap, in everybody’s way, as he had been in 
his father’s time, he was pressed right into hard 
service, for more hours in the day than any man 
worked about the place. Now work is good for 
boys, but all work and no play — worse yet, all 
work and no love — is not good for any one. 
Jack grew bitter ; and where he dared to be cruel, 
he was cruel ; where he dared to be insolent, he 
was insolent. Not toward Deacon Small, however, 
were these qualities displayed. The deacon was a 
hard master, and the boy feared, and hated, and 
obeyed him. But as the years went on, five of 
them, he grew to be generally considered a bad 
boy. At fifteen he was strong of his age, a man, 
almost* in size. 


12 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


His schooling had been confined to the short 
winter terms, and he had always been the terror 
of every successive schoolmaster. 

When he was fifteen, a new teacher came, — a 
handsome, graceful young man, just out of college. 
He was slight rather than stout, well-dressed, well- 
mannered, fit, you would have said, for a iady’s 
drawing-room, rather than the country school- 
house in winter, with its big boys, tough custom- 
ers, many of them, and Jack Ramsdale the toughest 
customer of all. After Mr. Garrison had passed 
his examination, one of the committee, impressed 
by what he thought a certain- fine-gentleman air in 
the young man, warned him of the rough times in 
store for him, and especially of the rough strength 
and insubordination of Jack Ramsdale. Ralph 
Garrison smiled a calm smile, but uttered no 
boasts. 

He had been a week in the school before he had 
any especial trouble. Jack was taking his meas- 
ure. The truth was, the boy had a certain amount 
of taste, and Garrison’s gentlemanliness impressed 
him more than he would have cared to own. It is 


against Wind and tide. 


IB 


possible that he might have gone on, quietly and 
obediently, but that now his bad name began to 
weigh him down. The boys who had looked up to 
him as a leader in evil grew impatient of his quiet 
submission to rules. “Got your match, Jack?” 
said one. “ Goin’ to own beat without giving it a 
try ? ” said another. And Jack began to think 
that the evil laurels he had won, as the bravo and 
bully of the school, would fall withered from his 
brow if he didn’t make some effort to fasten them. 

So one morning, midway between recess and the 
close of school, he took out an apple and began 
paring it with a jack-knife and eating it. For a 
moment Mr. Garrison looked at him ; then he 
remarked, with ominous quietness, in a tone lower 
and more gentle than usual, — 

“ Jack, this is not the place or time for eating.” 

“ My place and time to eat are when I am hun- 
gry,” Jack answered, with cool insolence, cutting 
off a mouthful, and carrying it deliberately to his 
mouth. 

“ You will put up that apple instantly, if you 
please.” 


14 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


Still the teacher spoke very gently, and turned 
a little pale. The persuasive words and the slight 
paleness misled Jack. He thought his victory was 
to be so easily won, there would not even be any 
glory in it. He smiled and ate, quite at his ease. 

“ You will come here whether you please or 
not,” was the next sentence from the teacher’s 
desk. Jack cut off another mouthful and sat still. 

Then, he never knew how it was, but suddenly, 
in the twinkling of an eye, he felt himslf pulled 
from his seat out into the middle of the floor while 
knife and apple flew from his hand. He kicked, 
he struggled, he tried to strike ; but an iron grasp 
held his wrists. The strong muscles of the stroke- 
oar at Harvard did good service. The handsome 
face was pale, but the lips were set like steel, and 
the cool eyes never wavered as they fixed and held 
those of the young bully. Then suddenly he 
whipped from his pocket a ball of strong fish-line 
and bound the struggling wrists tightly, and, push- 
ing a chair toward his captive, said, coolly, — 

“ I want nothing more of you till after school. 
You can sit or stand, as you please. Now I will 
hear the first class in arithmetic.” 


A GAINST WIND AND TIDE. 


15 


There was a strange hush in the school, and 
every scholar knew who was master. 

When all the rest had gone, the teacher turned 
to Jack Ramsdale. 

“ I took you a little by surprise,” he said. 
“ Perhaps you are not yet satisfied that I am 
stronger than you.” 

“ Yes, I’m satisfied,” Jack answered. “ I ain’t 
so mean but what I’m willing to own beat when 
it’s done fair and square.” 

Mr. Garrison, meanwhile, was untying his 
wrists. As he unwound the last coil, he said, — 

“ The forces of law and order are what rule the 
world. I think if you fight against them, you’ll 
always be likely to find yourself on the losing 
side.” 

A great bitter wave of defiance swelled up in 
Jack’s heart ; not against Mr. Garrison as an indi- 
vidual, but against such as he, — handsome, grace- 
ful, cultured ; against his own hard lot ; against a 
prosperous world ; against, it almost seemed, God, 
Himself. 

“ What do you know about it ? ” he said sul- 


16 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


lenly. “ You never had to fight. It was all on 
your side. God did it. He made you handsome 
and strong, and had you go to school and college, 
and grow up a gentleman. And he made me ” — 
how the face darkened here — “ what you see. 
He took my mother, who did love me and pray for 
me, away from me when I wasn’t more than three 
years old. He gave me to a father who drank hard 
and taught me nothing good. And then he took 
even him from me, and handed me over to Deacon 
Small ; and I tell you, teacher, you don’t know 
what a tough time is till you’ve summered and 
wintered with Deacon Small. I’ve got a bad 
name, and who wonders ? and I feel like living up 
to it. I hadn’t any thing against you, specially ; 
but if I’d given in peaceably to all your rules, the 
boys would have said I had grown chicken-hearted, 
and a little name for pluck is all the name I have 
got.” 

Mr. Garrison looked at him a few moments, 
steadily. Then he said, — 

“ It does seem as if fate had been hard on you. 
But do you know what I think God has been doing 


AGAINST WIND AND TIDE. 


17 


for you, in giving you all these hard knocks ; 
for things don’t happen; God never lets go the 
reins.” 

The hoy looked the question he did not speak, 
and Mr. Garrison went on. 

“ I think He has been making you strong, just 
as rowing against wind and tide made my wrists 
strong, until now you could fight all your enemies 
if you would. 

“ The thing we are put here for,” he continued, 
“ is to do our best ; and if we are doing that, in 
God’s sight, there is nothing that can prevail 
against us; not fate, or foes, or poverty, or any 
other creature. There is nothing' in all the uni- 
verse that is strong enough to stand against a soul 
that is bound to go up and not down. You may 
go home, now.” 

It was one of Mr. Garrison’s merits that he 
knew when to stop. Jack Ramsdale went home 
with that last sentence ringing in his ears,* — 

“ There is nothing in all the universe that is 
strong enough to stand against a soul that is 
bound to go up and not down.” 

2 


18 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


The words went with him all the rest of the day. 
They lay down with him at night, and he looked 
out of his window and fixed his eyes on a bright, 
far-off star, and thought of them. 

What if he should turn all the strength that 
was in him to going up and not down ? If he did 
right, who could make him afraid? If he served 
willingly, he need fear no master. It was very 
late, and the star, obedient to the law which rules 
the worlds, had marched far on, out of his sight, 
before he went to sleep. He had made a resolve. 
In the strength of that resolve he awoke to the 
new day. 

“ I will not go down,” he said to himself ; “ I 
will go up and on ! ” 

He was not all at once transformed from sinner 
to saint. Such sudden changes do not belong to 
this slow world. But the purpose and aim of his 
life was changed. Never again did he lose sight of 
the shining heights he meant to climb. If the 
mother in the heavenly home could look down on 
the world below, she knew that not in vain had she 
been “ a praying woman.” To Mr. Garrison the 


AGAINST WIND AND TIDE . 


19 


boy’s devotion was something wonderful, — humble, 
loyal, faithful, and never ceasing. From being the 
teacher’s terror, Jack had become the teacher’s 
friend. 


BLUE SKY AND WHITE CLOUDS. 


“ Q^AY yes, and you’ll be such a dear papa.” 

Papa bent down and kissed bis girl, before . 
be asked, half reproachfully, — 

44 And how if I say 4 no ’ ? Shan’t I be dear, 
then?” 

Ivathie blushed, and then laughed. 

44 Why, of course you’ll be dear, any way ; but 
may be it’s partly because you are so good, and 
hate so to say no to your own little daughter, that 
I love you so much. ” 

44 To my little daughter as tall as her mother? 
Do you know, small person, that I’ve often 
thought it might be better for that same little 
daughter if I said no to her oftener ? I couldn't 
love you more, but I’m afraid I might love you 
more wisely. A hundred and twenty-five dollars 
for a new party dress ! Bring your own mature 


BLUE SKY AND WHITE CLOUDS. 


21 


judgment to bear on it, and tell me if it appears 
quite sage, even to you.” 

Kathie thought so hard for a moment that she 
fairly scowled with earnestness ; then she an- 
swered, — 

“Yes, on the whole, I think it will be emi- 
nently judicious. You see, I shall be going out. 
a good deal now, and I can do so many different 
things with a handsome silk, and if I got a tarle- 
ton, or any of those cheap, thin goods, it would be 
used up at once.” 

Papa smiled. 

“ Well, if you are quite sure you’re right, I’ll 
bring the check home this noon, and you and 
mamma can begin your search for this wonderful 
yellow gown.” 

“Yellow!” Kathie clapped her hands to her 
ears. “ What did I ever do to make you think I 
would wear a horrid yellow gown ? ” 

“ Oh, was it red you said you wanted ? ” 

“ Worse and worse. You talk like a Hottentot. 
My gown is to be blue, soft, and lustrous, like a 
summer sky, and I am to look in it, — well, you 
shall see on Christmas Eve.” 


22 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


Then, with half a dozen good-by kisses, the 
father of this only child — happy, easy-going, and 
too indulgent — took himself off down town, and 
Kathie danced* away to the sewing-room to find 
her mother and inform her of her success. 

Kathie Mason, at sixteen, was a girl bright, 
and sweet, and bonny enough to tempt any parent 
to a little over-indulgence. She had soft, sunny, 
yellow hair ; and lovely, dark brown eyes ; with a 
look in them that kept saying, “ Oh, be good to 
me ! ” a delicate, flower-like face ; and a mouth 
red as Fair Rosamond’s, which has long been dust 
now, but which poets and painters raved about 
centuries ago. She had a graceful little figure, 
and a clear, fresh young voice ; and she had a 
heart, too, which was in the right place, though 
she herself was almost a stranger to it. She loved 
beauty dearly, whether in books, or nature, or 
human faces, or blue silk gowns, and it was just 
as natural to her to be a picture, whatever way 
she looked or moved, as it was to be Kathie. 

As she danced along she was humming a verse 
of a gay little French chanson , where some lover 


23 


BLUE SKY AND WHITE CLOUDS. 

said his love was like a rose ; and you thought it 
might have been written about herself, only 
Kathie had no thorns. As she drew near the 
sewing-room she stopped, for her mother and the 
dress-maker were talking busily. Miss Atkinson 
was a pathetic little woman, with eyes which 
looked as if the color had been washed out of 
them by many tears, a thin, frail body, and a voice 
not complaining, but simply plaintive. Somehow 
Kathie hated to break in upon the slow pathos of 
those tones with her blue silk ecstasy, so she stood 
leaning against the door for a few moments and 
waited. 

“You see,” the little woman was saying, “it 
w r as a great pull-back, my being sick two months 
in the summer, and then my brother being so 
much worse. But it will all come right, somehow. 
If I can manage to get Alice clothed up so she 
can go to school, I shall be thankful ; for she’s a 
bright child, and it’s too bad to have her wasting 
her time. But then, food and fire must come first, 
and if people are sick they are sick, and two 
hands can’t do any more than they can.” 


24 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


There was nothing to oppose to this mild fa- 
talism ; so Kathie’s mother only said, very sym- 
pathizingly, that it was hard, and that it seemed 
as if, with her sister and her sister’s child to 
support, Miss Atkinson had all she could do be- 
fore, without undertaking any new responsibilities 
for the ailing brother and his family. 

“ Oh ! but there’s no one else to do it if I don’t, 
you see,” quoth the little dress-maker, almost cheer- 
fully — as cheerfully, that is, as her voice could be 
made to speak ; but Kathie noticed that a moment 
after she pressed her hand on her side and drew 
a sharp, hard breath. 

“ Does your side pain you, Miss Atkinson ? ” 
she asked, kindly. 

“ Not much more than usual. It’s rather bad, 
most days. I went to work too soon after I was 
sick, the doctor said. But he didn’t tell me how 
the rest were going to live if I laid by any longer ; 
and, dear me, I’m thankful enough to be able to 
work at all.” 

Kathie thought she should be ashamed to have 
this poor little woman, who had two people be- 


BLUE SKY AND WRITE CLOUDS. 


25 


sides herself to provide for, entirely, and no know- 
ing how many more, in part, work on her bine silk 
superfluity. Clearly that must be made by some 
other dress-maker ; and she could not even speak 
to her mother about it now ; so she just asked for 
some work, and sat down with it, thinking more 
seriously than, perhaps, she had. ever thought in 
her gay, butterfly life before. 

“ How old is your little niece, Alice ? ” she 
asked, after a while. 

“ Ten, and she is as far along in her studies now 
as a good many girls of twelve. I did mean to 
have sent her straight through, normal school and 
all, and let her prepare to be a teacher; but it 
doesn’t look much like it, now William’s taken 
so poorly. I expect I shall have to pretty much 
clothe his three children besides Alice.” 

“ Can’t your sister, little Alice’s mother, help 
you at all ? ” 

Well, yes, she does help. She does all she’s 
able to, and more ; for, you see, she’s feeble, too. 
She keeps house for us, and cooks, and washes 
and makes our things after I fit them, and keeps 


26 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


us mended; but there’s nothing she can do to 
bring in any thing. But there, I beg your par- 
don ten times over, apiece. It’s against my prin- 
ciples to go out sewing, and harrow up folks’ 
minds with my troubles ; only, you see, I’m a 
little nervous and unsettled to-day on account of 
Alice’s crying pretty hard this morning because 
she hadn’t any thing to wear to school.” 

Papa Mason took Kathie aside when he came 
home to dinner, and with a little fun, and teasing, 
and pretence of mystery, produced the check. 
There it was, one hundred and twenty-five dollars, 
all right, and three weeks between now and 
Christmas Eve to get her blue silk gown made. 

While she ate her roast beef she began to think 
again. One question kept asking itself over in 
her mind, — Why should some people have blue 
silk gowns, and others have no gowns at all? I 
rather think we have all asked ourselves this same 
thing, in one form of words or another. Since the 
great Father made and loves us all, why should 
one be Queen Victoria and another little Alice 
staying at home from school for want of a few 


BLUE SKY AND WHITE CLOUDS. 27 


yards of woollen and a pair of boots? Political 
economists have ciphered it all out, beautifully; 
but Kathie did not know that, and so the vexing 
question puzzled her. What if it was done just to 
give us a chance to help each other? she asked 
herself, at last, and the text of a sermon she heard 
once came into her mind, — “Bear ye one an- 
other’s burdens.” If all fared just alike there 
would be no chance for helpfulness, or charity, or 
self-denial; so may be clothes would be put on 
people’s backs at the expense of better things in 
their hearts. It must be that God knew best. Oh ! 
if one couldn’t think that, the world might as well 
fall to pieces at once. 

“Will you have pudding, dear? I have asked 
you three times,” said Mrs. Mason’s voice, with a 
little extra energy in it ; and Kathie looked up out 
of her dream with a certain vagueness in her eyes, 
and answered, — 

“ A hundred and twenty-five,” whereat they all 
laughed. 

“ I can’t give you a hundred and twenty-five 
puddings ; but, if you’ll please make a beginning 


28 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


with this one, no doubt the rest will come before 
the year is over.” 

Whereupon Kathie roused herself from her spec- 
ulations, ate her pudding, and sent her plate for 
more, with a good, healthy, girlish appetite. 

That afternoon she sewed quite diligently, and 
talked little ; but her eyes were bright, and her 
face all the time eager with some thought. 

After tea was over, and Miss Atkinson had gone, 
and papa had stepped out to see a business friend, 
Kathie sat down, as was one of her habits, on a 
low stool beside her mother, and laid her head in 
her lap. Mrs. Mason knew that all the afternoon’s 
thinking would come out before the child got up 
again ; so she just smoothed the fluffy, yellow hair 
with her hand and waited. 

“ Don’t you think, mamma, that Miss Atkinson 
must be a good deal better Christian than the rest 
of us, she’s such a patient burden-bearer? She 
never seemed to think for one moment that it was 
hard she should have to work so, or that she 
couldn’t have what she wanted herself. All that 
troubled her was because she couldn’t do what she 
had planned for Alice.” 


BLUE SKY AND WHITE CLOUDS. 


29 


Then, when Mrs. Mason had made some slight, 
answer, there was silence again for a time; and 
then Kathie cried impulsively, — 

“ Mamma, what a perfect good-for-nothing I am. 
I never carried a burden for any one in my life. I 
have just been a dead weight on some one else’s 
hands.” 

“Not a dead weight, by any means,” and Mrs. 
Mason laughed, “ and really, papa and I have 
found it rather a pleasure than otherwise to carry 
you.” 

The loving girl kissed the hand that had been 
stroking her hair, but she was quite too much in 
earnest to laugh. 

“Well, mamma, you know it doesn’t say, — 
‘Bear ye one another’s burdens, all of you but 
Kathie, and she needn’t.’ I think this rule with- 
out any exceptions means me, just as much as it 
does any one ; and I shan’t feel quite right in my 
own mind till I begin to follow it. I want to bear 
part of Alice.” 

Kathie was talking very fast by this time, and 
her cheeks w«ere very pink, and her brown eyes 
very bright. 


30 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


“ You see I’ve thought it all out, this afternoon. 
If Miss Atkinson will feed her and house her, I do 
think I might undertake to clothe her' until she is 
through school and ready to teach ; and don’t you 
think I’d feel better when I came to die to have 
done some little thing for somebody? You see it 
would come very easy. My dresses, and cloaks, 
and hats would all make over for her. There 
wouldn’t be much to buy outright, except boots, 
and stockings, and under clothes, generally.” 

“ And wouldn’t you find all that rather a heavy 
drain on your pocket-money ? I don’t ask to dis- 
courage you, childie ; only I want you to consider 
it all thoroughly, for if you should once undertake 
this thing and lead Miss Atkinson and Alice to 
depend on it, there could be no drawing back 
then.” 

“ Yes, I have thought about it all. Didn’t you 
see me working it out in my head this afternoon, 
like a sum in arithmetic? I think half the money 
papa gives me for lunches, and presents, and the 
other things pocket-money goes for, would be just 
as good for me as the whole ; and I am sure with 


BLUE SKY AND WHITE CLOUDS. 


31 


half of it I could keep Alice along nicely after I 
once got her started ; and its just about this start 
I want to speak to you now. Papa gave me a 
hundred and twenty-five dollars to-day to buy me 
a blue silk gown for Aunt Jane’s Christmas-Eve 
party. Now fifty dollars will get me a lovely 
white muslin, and a blue sash, and all the fresh 
little fixings I should need ; and that would leave 
seventy-five dollars, with which I could buy flan- 
nels, and boots, and water-proof, and a good, 
warm, strong outfit altogether, for Alice to com- 
mence with. Now do you think papa would be 
willing ? I don’t want to ask him, for he doesn’t 
understand silks and muslins, or what Alice needs ; 
but would you answer for him ? J ust think, 
mamma, what burdens poor Miss Atkinson has to 
bear.” 

Mrs. Mason started to say, — “ It is all for her own 
relations,” —-but stopped, for the command didn’t 
read, “ Relations, bear ye one another’s burdens.” 
Had she any right to interfere between Kathie and 
this first work of charity the child had ever been 
inspired to undertake? Would not this object 


32 


MORE BEE-TIME STORIES. 


of interest outside herself, apart from blue silk 
gowns, and flounces, and furbelows, do something 
for her girl that was likely to be left undone other- 
wise ? What a very cold loving-one-another we 
were most of us doing in this world, after all? 
So she bent over and kissed the eager, lovety, 
upturned face that waited for her words, and said 
fondly, — 

“ Yes, I will answer for papa, my darling. I 
approve your plan heartily, but I will not offer 
help. This shall be all your own good work.” 

The next morning Miss Atkinson was told of 
the new plan. Her faded eyes opened twice as 
widely as usual. She was not sure she heard 
aright. 

“Do you mean to say Miss Kathie, that you 
undertake, with your mamma’s full consent, to 
clothe Alice until she is through school ? ” 

“ That is precisely what I bind myself to do,” 
Kathie answered, gravely copying the solemnity of 
the little dress-maker. 

“ Then all I have to say is, bless you, and bless 
the Lord. You never can tell what good you’re 
doing.” 


BLUE SKY AND WHITE CLOUDS. 


33 


And then the poor little woman began to cry, 
just for pure joy; and she sobbed till Mamma 
Mason felt her eyes growing misty, and Kathie ran 
away out of the room. 

Be sure that Miss Atkinson made up Kathie’s 
muslin lovingly. It would not be her fault if it 
were not prettier than any silk. And truly, when 
Christmas Eve came and Kathie was dressed for 
Aunt Jane’s party, there could hardly have been a 
more radiant vision than this white-robed shape 
with the sunny, soft hair, the gleaming brown eyes, 
and the wild-rose cheeks, where the color came 
and went. Her father looked her over with all 
his heart in his eyes, and a tenderness which quiv- 
ered in his voice, though he tried to speak jest- 
ingly. 

“ So there wasn’t blue sky enough for any thing 
but your sash, and you had to take white clouds 
for the rest.” 

“ Just that. Don’t you like the clouds ? ” 

He bent and kissed her. 

u Yes, I like the clouds ; and I think the sun- 
shine struck through them for somebody.” 

3 


THE COUSIN FROM BOSTON. 


E had been friends ever since I could remem- 



* * ber, Nelly and I. We were just about the 
same age. Our parents were neighbors, in the' 
quiet country town where we both lived. I was an 
only child ; and Nelly was an only daughter, with 
two strong brothers who idolized her. 

We were always together. We went to the 
same school, and sat on the same bench, and used 
the same desk. We learned the same lessons. I 
had almost said we thought the same thoughts. 
We certainly loved the same pleasures. We used 
to go together, in early spring, to hunt the dainty 
may-flowers from under the sheltering dead leaves, 
and to find the shy little blue-eyed violets. We 
went hand in hand into the still summer woods, 
and gathered the delicate maiden-hair, and the 
soft mosses, and all the summer wealth of bud and 


THE COUSIN FROM BOSTON. 


35 


blossom. Gay little birds sang to us. The deep 
blue sky bent over us, and the happy little brooks 
murmured and frolicked at our feet. 

In autumn we went nutting and apple gathering. 
In the winter we slid, and coasted, and snow- 
balled. For every season, there was some special 
pleasure, — and always Nelly and I were together, 
— always sufficient to each other, for company. 
We never dreamed that any thing could come be- 
tween us, or that we could ever learn to live with- 
out each other. 

We were thirteen when Nelly’s cousin from 
Boston — Lill Simmonds, her name was — came to 
see her. It was vacation then, and I had not 
seen Nelly for two days, because it had been rain- 
ing hard. So I did not know of the expected 
guest, until one morning Nelly’s brother Tom 
came over, and told me that his Aunt Simmonds, 
from Boston, was expected that noon, and with 
her his Cousin Lill. 

“ She’ll be a nice playmate for you and Nelly,” 
he said. “ She’s only a year older than you two, 
and she used to have plenty of fun in her. Nelly 
wants you to come over this afternoon, sure.” 


86 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


That was the beginning of my feeling hard 
toward Nelly. I was unreasonable, I know, but 
I thought she might have come to tell me the 
news, herself. I felt a sort of bitter, shut-out feel- 
ing all the forenoon, and after dinner I was half 
minded not to go over, — to let her have her Boston 
cousin all to herself. 

My mother heard some of my speeches, but she 
was wise enough not to interfere. When she saw, 
at last, that curiosity and inclination had gotten 
the better of pique and jealousy, she basted a fresh 
ruffle in the neck of my afternoon dress, and tied a 
pretty blue ribbon in my hair, and I looked as neat 
and suitable for the occasion as possible. 

At least I thought so, until I got to Nelly’s. 
She did not watch for my coming, and run to the 
gate to meet me, as usual. Of course it was per- 
fectly natural that she should be entertaining her 
cousin, but I missed the accustomed greeting ; and 
when she heard my voice at the door, and came out 
of the parlor to speak to me, I know that if my 
face reflected my heart, it must have worn a most 
sullen and unamiable expression. 


TEE COUSIN FROM BOSTON. 


87 


“ I’m so glad you’ve come, Sophie,” she said 
cheerfully. “ Lill is in the parlor. I want you to 
like her. But you can’t help it, I know, she’s so 
lovely ; such a beauty.” 

“ Perhaps I shan’t see with your eyes,” I 
answered, with what I imagined to be most cut- 
ting coldness and dignity. 

“ Oh yes ! I guess you will,” she laughed. <4 We 
have thought alike about most things, all our 
lives.” 

I followed her into the parlor, and I saw Lill. 
If you are a country girl who read, and have ever 
been suddenly confronted with a city young lady 
in the height of fashion, to whom you were ex- 
pected to make }^ourself agreeable, you can, per- 
haps, understand what I felt ; particularly if by 
nature you are not only sensitive, but somewhat- 
vain, as I am sorry to confess I was. I had been 
used to think myself as well-dressed, and as well- 
looking as any of my young neighbors ; I was 
neither as well-dressed nor as well -looking as 
Lill Simmonds. 

Nelly was right. She was a beauty. She was 


38 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


a little taller than Nelly or I, — a slender, graceful 
creature, with a high-bred air. It was years before 
they had begun to crimp little girls’ hair, but I 
think Lill’s must have been crimped. It was a 
perfect golden cloud about her face and shoulders, 
and all full of little shining waves and ripples. 
Then what eyes she had — star bright and deep 
blue and with lashes so long that when they 
drooped they cast a shadow on the pale pink of 
her cheeks. Her features were all delicate and 
pure ; her hands white, with one or two glittering 
rings upon them ; and her clothes ! My own 
gowns had not seemed to me ill-made before ; but 
now I thought Nelly and I both looked as if we 
had come out of the ark. It was the first of Sep- 
tember, and her dress had just been made for fall, — 
a rich, glossy, blue poplin, with soft lace at throat 
and wrists, and a pin and some tiny ear jewels of 
exquisitely cut pink coral. 

“ Yes,” I thought to myself bitterly, “ no won- 
der Nelly was dazzled. She may like to be the 
contrast, to help Miss Fine-Airs show off ; but I 
object to that character, and I shall keep pretty 
clear of this house while Miss Lill is in it.” 


THE COUSIN FROM BOSTON. 


89 


I spoke to her politely enough, I suppose ; and 
she answered me, it might have been either shyly 
or haughtily : I chose in my then mood to think 
the latter. Decidedly the afternoon was not a 
success. 

Nelly did her best to make it pleasant; but she 
and I couldn’t go poking about into all sorts of odd 
places, as we did when we were alone, and we 
did not know what the Boston cousin would like 
to do ; so we put on our company manners and 
talked , and for an illustration of utter dulness and 
dreariness commend me to a “ talk ” between three 
girls in their early teens, who have nothing of the 
social ease which comes of experience and culture, 
and where two of them have nothing in copimon 
with the other, as regards daily pursuits and habits 
of life. Lill talked a little about Burnham’s — it 
was before Boring’s day — but we had read no 
novelists but Scott and Dickens, and we couldn’t 
discuss with her whether it wasn t too bad that 
Gerald married Isabel and did not marry Margaret. 

We might have brightened a little over the 
supper, but then Mrs. Simmonds, who had been 


40 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


sitting upstairs with Nelly’s mother, was present, 
— a stately dame, in rustling silk and gleaming 
jewels, who overawed me completely. I was glad 
to go home ; but the little root of bitterness I had 
carried in my heart had grown, until, for the time, 
it choked out every thing sweet and good. 

While the Boston cousin stayed, I saw little of 
Nelly. I am telling the truth, and I must confess 
it was my fault. I know now that Nelly was 
unchanged ; but, of course, she was very much 
occupied. Whenever I saw her she was so full of 
Bill’s praises that I foolishly thought I was nothing 
to her any more, and Lill was every thing. If I 
had chosen to verify her words, instead of chafe at 
them, I, too, might have enjoyed Bill’s grace and 
beauty, and learned from her a great many things 
worth knowing. But I took my own course, and 
if the cup I drank was bitter, it was of my own 
brewing. 

At last, one afternoon, Nelly came over by her- 
self to see me. I was most ungracious in my 
welcome. 

“ I don’t see how you could tear yourself away 


THE COUSIN FROM BOSTON. 


41 


from your city company,” I said, with that small, 
hateful sarcasm, which is so often a girl’s weapon. 
“ They say self-denial is blest: I hope yours will 
be.” 

Perhaps Nelly guessed that my hatefulness had 
its root in pain ; or it may have been that her own 
heart was too full of something else for her to 
notice my mood. 

“ Lill is going to-morrow,” she said, gently. 

“ Indeed ! ” I answered ; “ I don’t know how the 
town will support the loss of so much beauty and 
grace. I suppose I shall see more of you then ; 
but I must not be selfish enough to rejoice in the 
general misfortune.” 

Nelly’s gentle eyes filled with tears at last. 

“ Sophie,” she said, “ how can you be so unkind, 
you whom I have loved all my life ? I am going, 
too, with Lill, and that is what I came to tell you. 
Ever since she has been here, Aunt Simmonds has 
been trying to persuade mother to let me go back 
for a year’s schooling with Lill, but it was not 
decided until last night. Mother thought, at first, 
that I must wait to have my winter things made ; 


42 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


but Aunt Simmonds said she could get them better 
in Boston, and the same woman would make them 
for me who makes Lill’s.” 

“ Indeed ! How well dressed you will be ! ” I 
said bitterly. “How you will respect yourself! ” 
“Sophie, I don’t know you,” Nelly burst out, 
indignantly. “ The hardest of all was to leave 
you, for we’ve been together all our lives ; but you 
are making it easy. Good-by.” 

She put her arms round me, even then, and 
kissed me, and I responded coldly. Oh how could 
I, when I loved her so? I watched her out of 
sight, and then I sank down upon the grass, and 
laid my head upon a little bench where we had 
often sat together, and sobbed and cried till I 
could scarcely see. I was half tempted to go over 
to Nelly’s, and ask her to forgive me ; but my 
wicked pride and jealousy wouldn’t let me. Lill 
would be there, I thought, and she wouldn’t want 
me while she had Lill. So I stayed away. 

“ The next morning they all went off. When I 
heard the car-whistle at the little railroad station 
a mile and a half away, I began to cry again. 


TEE COUSIN FROM BOSTON. 


43 


Then, if it had not been too late, I would have 
gone and implored my friend to forgive me, and 
not shut me out of her heart. But the day for 
repentance was over. 

The slow months went on. I missed Nelly at 
school, at home, everywhere. I longed for her with 
an incurable longing. It was to me almost as if she 
were dead. People wrote many less letters in 
those days than they do now, and neither Nelly nor 
I had learned to express any thing of our real 
selves on paper. We exchanged three or four 
letters, but they amounted to little more than the 
statement that we were well, and the list of our 
studies. One look into Nelly’s eyes would have 
been worth a thousand such. 

There were other pleasant girls in town, but I 
took none of them into Nelly’s vacant place : how 
could I ? Who of them would remember all my 
past life, as she did, — she who had shared with me 
so many perfect days of June, so many long, bright 
summers and melancholy autumns, and winters 
white with snow? I was, as I have shown you, 
jealous and hateful and cruel, but never for a 
moment fickle. 


44 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


At last Nelly came again. It was a day in the 
late June, and she found me just where she had 
left me, under the old horse-chestnut tree in the 
great old-fashioned garden. I knew it must be 
almost time for her coming, but I had not asked 
any one about it. Somehow I couldn’t. I very 
seldom even spoke her name in those days. So 
she stole upon me unawares, and the first I knew 
her arms were round me, — her warm, tender lips 
against my own, — and her sweet, unchanged voice 
cried, — 

“ O Sophie, this is good, this is coming home, 
indeed ! ” 

I cried like a very child. Nell didn’t quite un- 
derstand that ; but then she had not had, like me, 
a hard place in her heart, which needed happy 
tears to melt it away. I think, in spite of the 
tears, I was more glad of the meeting even than 
she. After a little while she said, — 

“ Come, I want you to go home with me now, 
and see Lill.” 

Will you believe that even then the old, bitter 
jealousy began to gnaw again at my heart? 


THE COUSIN FROM BOSTON. 


45 


She had been with Lill almost a year ; could she 
not be content to give me a single hour without 
her ? Perhaps she saw my thought in my face ; 
for she added, in such a sad, pitiful tone, “ Poor 
Lill ! ” 

“ Poor Lill, ” indeed ! with her beautiful gold- 
en hair, and her eyes like stars, and her lovely 
gowns, and her city airs, “ poor Lill ! ” 

“ I should never think of calling Miss Simmonds 
poor, ” I said, with the old hardness back in my 
voice. 

“You will when you see her, now, ” Nelly an- 
swered gently. “ She had a hard fall on the icy 
pavement, last winter, and she hurt her hip, and 
it’s been growing worse and worse. She can 
hardly walk at all, now, and she has suffered 
awfully. But she has been, oh so patient!” 

And how I had dared to envy that girl ! I 
was shocked and silenced. I walked along by 
Nelly’s side very quietly. When we got there 
she took me up into her room, and there I saw 
Lill Simmonds. I should hardly have known her. 
The golden glory of hair floated about her still. 


46 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


The eyes were star-bright yet, but the cheeks 
which the long lashes shaded were pink no 
longer, and they were so thin and hollow that it 
was pitiful to see them. 

She wore a wrapper of some soft blue stuff, 
and on her lap lay her frail, transparent hands. 
She started up to meet us with a smile which for 
a moment gave back some of the old brightness 
to her face, but which faded almost instantly. I 
sat down beside the lounging-chair where she 
was lying, but I could not talk to her. The sight 
of her wasted loveliness was all too sad. After 
a little while she said to Nelly, — 

“ Won’t you, you are always so good to me, go ' 
and fetch me a glass of the cool water from the 
spring at the foot of the garden?” 

Nelly went instantly, and then Lill turned to 
me and put her hand on my arm. 

“ I asked her to go, Sophie, ” she said, “because 
I wanted to speak to you. I wanted to say some- 
thing to you which it would hurt her to hear. 

I used to be very jealous of you, Sophie. I 
wanted Nelly to love me best, but she never 


THE COUSIN FROM BOSTON. 


47 


did. She had loved you so long that I could see 
you were always first in her heart. And now I 
am glad. I shall never be well again, and when 
I am gone I would not like Nelly to be so un- 
happy as she would be if she had loved me first 
and best. She will miss me, and she will be very 
sorry for me ; but she will have you, and you 
can comfort her. I am ashamed now of that 
old jealousy. I think it made me not nice to you 
last summer.” 

Lill jealous of me ! I was dumb with sheer 
amazement. And I, how much bitterness and 
injustice I had to confess ! But before I could 
put it into words Nelly had come back, and a 
look from Lill kept me silent. 

That night, when I went away, I put my arms 
round my darling and kissed her with my whole 
heart, as I had not done for a year. She never 
knew how much went into that kiss, of sorrow 
and shame and self-reproach. 

What months those were which followed! I 
was constantly with Nelly and her cousin. Mrs. 
Simmonds was there, but Lill spent most of her 


48 


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day-time hours with us girls ; to spare her mother, 
probably, who was with her every night, and 
also because she loved us both. Sometimes, on 
fine days, she would walk a little under the trees ; 
and I have knelt unseen, in a passion of loving 
humility, and kissed the grass over which she 
had dragged after her her helpless foot. Growing 
near to death, she grew in grace. As Nelly said, 
one day, — 

“Her wings are growing. She will fly away 
with them soon.” 

And so she did. Through the summer she 
lingered, suffering much at times, but always 
patient and gentle and uncomplaining. And 
when the dead leaves of autumn went fluttering 
down the wind, she died with the dead summer, 
and upborne on the wings of some messenger of 
God her soul went home. 

Even her mother hardly dared mourn for her, 
— her life had been so pure and so peaceful, — her 
death was so tranquil and so happy. I had 
ceased, long before, to be jealous of her. No one 
could love her too much. She was my saint ; 


THE COUSIN FROM BOSTON. 


49 


and her memory has hallowed many a thought 
during the long, world-weary years since. I need 
but to close my eyes to see a pale, patient face, 
with its glory of golden hair and its eyes bright 
as stars ; and often, on some soft wind, I seem to 
hear her voice, speaking again the last words I 
ever heard her speak, — 

“ Love each other always, my darlings, and 
remember I loved you both.” 

We have obeyed her faithfully, Nelly and I. 
Through the long years since, no coldness or 
estrangement has ever come between us. My 
first and last jealousy was buried in Lill’s grave ; 
and Nelly and I have proved, to our own satis- 
faction at least, that a friendship between two 
girls may be strong as it is sweet, faithful as it is 
fond, — the inalienable riches of a whole life. 


4 


MISSY. 


IV/riSS HURLBURT had wandered farther into 
the woods than was her habit, beguiled by 
the wonderful loveliness overhead, underfoot, all 
about her. It was an afternoon in early October, 
but warm as June. The leaves were of a thousand 
brilliant hues; for one or two nights of keen 
frost, a week before, had seemed to set them on 
fire. There were boughs as scarlet as the burn- 
ing bush before which Moses wondered and wor- 
shipped. There were others of deep orange ; 
and others, still, of variegated leaves, where the 
green lingered and was mixed with scarlet and 
brown and yellow, till some of them looked like 
patterns in a kaleidoscope. 

Underfoot was the delicate, fresh woodland 
moss. Sometimes pine needles^ made the path 


MISSY. 


51 


soft ; and sometimes, leaves, which had died ear- 
lier than their mates, rustled under Miss Hurl- 
burt’s treads Above, high over the flaming tree 
boughs, was the deep, lustrous, blue sky, with 
all its heavenly secrets. The air was full of 
that wonderful, radiant haze of autumn which 
makes the distance vague with' beauty. And 
the temperature, as I said, was of J une ; so warm 
that Miss Hurlburt had taken off her hat, and 
let the scarlet mantle fall from her shoulders. 

She herself, had a painter been there to study 
the scene, would have been no unworthy wood 
nymph. Her figure was full, but not too full for 
grace. Health and strength were in every line 
of it. Her fine, abundant hair, like that of 
which Lowell wrote, “ outwardly brown, but in- 
wardly golden,” was brushed back from her low, 
broad forehead, and coiled in a great heavy knot, 
from which a stray curl or two had escaped, at 
the back of her proud little head. 

She had great brown eyes, full of thought and 
feeling; cheeks, in which the rich, warm color 
glowed; bright, full, half-parted lips. She car- 


52 


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ried herself with grace, regal though unstudied. 
She never consciously remembered that she was 
Eleanor Hurlburt, — whose father owned the two 
great factories in the valley, and all the lands 
far and near, even these royal woods through 
which she walked, — but, unconsciously to her- 
self, the fact gave firmness and elasticity to her 
step, and self-possession to her air. 

She very seldom wandered alone so far away 
from home. The factory hands were a necessary 
part of the great wealth which surrounded Miss 
Hurlburt’s life with ease and luxury; but some 
of them might not be altogether pleasant to 
meet in lonely places, — so she usually was driven 
out in the elegant Victoria, with the spanking 
bays which were her father’s pride, by the dec- 
orous family coachman ; or drove herself in her 
jaunty little pony phaeton, with her own man, all 
bands and buttons, seated in the rumble behind. 

But to-day it happened that she was walking. 
I said “ it. happened,” because we speak in that 
way before we think; though nothing is farther 
from my belief than that any thing ever happens 


MISSY. 


53 


in this world which God has made, and in which 
He never loses sight of the smallest or poorest 
thing. At any rate, Miss Hurlburt was walking, 
and she wandered on, until at last she heard a 
tender little voice singing a tender little song. It 
was so fine and clear, it might almost have been 
the carol of a bird, only birds have not yet learned 
the English language, and this voice sang : 

“ Your brother has a falcon, 

Your sister has a flower ; 

But what is left for manikin, 

Born within an hour 'i 

“ I’ll nurse you on my knee, my knee. 

My own little son ; 

I’ll rock you, rock you in my arms. 

My least little one.” 

Such a quaint little song, such a quaint little 
voice ! Miss Hurlburt wondered for a moment 
who it could possibly be. Then she remembered 
hearing that, while she was away in the summer, 
an elderly English woman and a little girl had 
been allowed to take possession of the cabin in the 
woods which her father owned. 

It was a little house with two rooms, which had 


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been built, long ago, as a lodge for hunters ; but 
which had for several years stood vacant, being 
too far from the factories to be a convenient resi- 
dence for any of the hands. 

Miss Hurlburt went on a few steps farther, and 
saw the singer. It was a pretty picture. A little 
creature, who looked about five or six years old, 
sat in the door-way tending a battered doll. She 
was almost as brown as a gypsy, this small waif, 
but there was a singular grace about her. Her 
black hair hung in thick, short curls. She had 
great, bright, black eyes ; lips as red as strawber- 
ries ; and teeth as white as pearls. 

Miss Hurlburt moved on softly, so as not to dis- 
turb her ; and the waif took up her doll, and talked 
to it wisely and soberly, after the manner of some 
mothers. 

“ Now, Pinky, me love, I have singed you a 
song. Now you must be good for a whole week of 
hours, or I shan’t sing to you, never no more. I 
mean any more, Pinky. Be very careful how you 
speak, always ; no good children ever go wrong 
in their talking.’’ 


MISSY. 


55 


By this time Miss Hurlburt had almost reached 
her side. 

“ Does your child give you much trouble ? ” she 
said, in a tone friendly and inviting confidence. 

The mite shook her head, with all its black 
curls. 

“ Pinky, me love ? No ; she only gives me 
trouble when she is bad. She is good most al- 
ways, unless it rains.” 

“Is she bad then?” with an air of anxious 
interest. 

“ Certain she is : who wouldn’t be ? She has to 
stay in the house then ; and she doesn’t like it. 
Would you? How can persons be goopl when 
they don’t have what they want?” 

By this time a nice, motherly-looking old English 
woman had heard the talk, and came forward to 
the door. 

“ Missy,” she said, “ always thinks Pinky is bad 
when she is bad herself ; and Missy is most always 
cross when it rains.” 

“ What is your name ? ” Miss Hurlburt asked, 
bending to smooth the black curls. 


50 


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“Berenice Ashford,” the child answered, in a 
slow, painstaking manner, as if the words had 
been taught her with care ; “ but they don’t call 
me that, — they call me ‘ Missy.’ ” 

“ Is she your grandchild ? ” was the next ques- 
tion, addressed to the elderly woman, who had set 
a chair near the door and asked the young lady to 
sit down. 

“ No, that she isn’t, and I would like much to 
find out whose child she is. To be sure, I should 
miss her more than a little, if I had to part with 
her: but, all the same, I should like to find her 
kindred. She belongs to gentle-folks, and I can’t 
do for her what ought to be done.” 

A few more questions drew out the whole story. 
The woman, Mrs. Smith, had a son in America, 
who was doing well at his trade of dyeing ; and he 
had sent for her to come out to him. He had sent 
money enough for her expenses, and she had taken 
passage in the second cabin of a steamer. 

Among her fellow-passengers were Missy and 
her mother, — the latter a beautiful young lady, 
Mrs. Smith said, but very pale and sad. She had 


MISSY. 


57 


complained sometimes of a keen and terrible pain 
in her heart ; but she had made little conversation 
with any one. When they were five days out, she 
had been found in the morning dead in her berth, 
with Missy sound asleep beside her. 

There was no possible clew to her history. In her 
trunk, full of her own clothes and Missy’s, was no 
scrap of handwriting, no address. The one or two 
books which were there, bore on their fly-leaves 
only the inscription u E. Forsyth.” She had taken 
passage as Mrs. Forsyth, but the captain knew 
nothing more about her. 

Mrs. Smith had somehow taken possession of 
Missy. She had played with the child and amused 
her a good deal, before her mother died ; and now 
the little creature clung to her as her only friend. 

There was something over a hundred dollars in 
the mother’s trunk, but as yet Mrs. Smith said she 
had not used it. When she reached New York, 
instead of being met by her son, an old neighbor 
came for her to the steamer, brought her the news 
of his death, and gave her the money — nearly a 
thousand dollars in all — which he had been saving 


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to make the new home they were to have together 
comfortable. 

It was an awful blow, and she clung to Missy, 
then, for it seemed as if the child was all she had 
left in the world. The captain said that he would 
advertise for the little one’s friends; but, mean- 
time, he was evidently very glad to be relieved of 
the responsibility of her. 

“ How happened you to come here ? ” Miss 
Hurlburt asked. 

“ I had always lived in the country, miss, and I 
didn’t want to stay any longer than I could help 
in New York ; and my son had been meaning to 
bring me here. It seemed a little comfort, to come 
where I should have come with him. He had 
engaged with Mr. Hurlburt — the one who owns 
the big factories — to come here and see to the 
dyeing ; and Mr. Hurlburt was so good as to give 
me this little house rent-free, for a while. By and 
by I want to get something to do. If I could be 
housekeeper somewhere where I could keep Missy, 
or head-nurse, or something of that sort, it would 
suit me, — but there’s no hurry.” 


MISSY. 


59 


“ Mr. Hurlburt is my father,” the young lady 
said, when she had heard the story through. “We 
must see what can be done. Missy, should you 
like to live with me ? ” 

The child considered. Then she addressed her 
doll, inquiringly. 

“ Pinky, me love, should you like to live with 
the lady? I guess she’s good. Would you go, if 
your mother went ? ” Then she pretended to 
listen. “‘No, I thank you,’ Pinky says; ‘she 
couldn’t go without Grandma Smith.’ ” 

“ Of course Pinky couldn’t,” Miss Hurlburt 
said, laughing. “ Well, then, 111 come again to 
see you, and bring Pinky’s new gown.” 

That evening, at dinner, Miss Hurlburt was 
radiant. She knew her father liked to see her 
well dressed, and she made a handsome toilet. 
She coaxed him into his very best humor by all 
the arts only daughters of widowed fathers are 
wont to use ; and then, when he was seated com- 
fortably before the open fire, which tempered the 
chill of the October evening, she unfolded her 
plan and her wishes. 


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The beginning and the end were that she wanted 
Missy, — she must have Missy, — and the middle 
was that she couldn’t be so cruel as to take from 
Mrs. Smith her one comfort, so she wanted Mrs. 
Smith. She represented herself as fearfully over- 
worked, in keeping the establishment in order. 
Now how nice it would be if Mrs. Smith could 
take all the troublesome details of that off her 
hands; could see that the house was clean, and 
the washing well done, and the buttons on. She 
had needed just such a person a long time, but she 
hadn’t known where to find her; and now here 
she was, really made to order, as it seemed. 

Of course she had her way. The world called 
Jonathan Hurlburt a stern man % but it was not 
often he could say “no” to his motherless daugh- 
ter. The very next day Miss Hurlburt went with 
her proposition to the little cabin in the wood; 
and, before a week was over, Missy and Grandma 
Smith were duly installed as members of the Hurl- 
burt household. 

As for the business part of the experiment, Mrs. 
Smith proved worth her weight in gold, as they 


MISSY. 


61 


say. Before three months were over, Mr. Hurl- 
burt discovered that she saved him five times her 
wages in money, and added immeasurably to the 
household comfort, — indeed, he concluded that 
she was, as Eleanor had said, really made to order. 

As for Missy, with her quaint ways, her odd, old- 
fashioned speeches, and the little songs she sang, 
she was speedily the delight of the household. 
She lost no whit of her affection for Grandma 
Smith, but it was Miss* Hurlburt who was her 
idol. 

“ Pinky, me love,” she used often to say to her 
faithful doll friend, “ did you ever see any miss so 
nice as our Miss Hurlburt? You had better not 
say you did, Pinky, me, love; because then it 
would be me very sorrowful duty to whip you for 
telling lies.” 

Miss Hurlburt’s delight in her little waif was 
unbounded. She dressed her up, like a child in a 
story-book. When she drove in her Victoria, 
Missy always sat beside her, gorgeous in velvet 
suit and soft ermine furs ; and at home Missy was 
never far away. 


62 


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Before spring, another strange event took place. 
I will not say happened, for no chapter of accidents 
would ever have read so strangely. A young 
English manufacturer came over to America. Mr. 
Hurlburt had had, by letter, various dealings with 
the firm which he represented and, on hearing of 
his arrival in New York, wrote, begging a visit of 
some length from him. The young man, whose 
object in his American journey was partly business 
and partly pleasure, saw an opportunity to combine 
both in this visit, and accepted the invitation. 

He amused himself more or less with Missy, as 
did every one who came to the house ; but he had 
been a member of the household for several days 
before it occurred to him that she was not Miss 
Hurlburt’s young sister. Under this impression 
he remarked one night, — 

“ How curiously slight is the resemblance be- 
tween yourself and your little sister, Miss Hurl- 
burt ! ” 

“ Oh ! Missy is not my sister,” was the smiling 
answer. “ She is treasure-trove, Mr. Goring.” 

And a little later, when Missy had danced away 


MISSY. 


63 


in search of Pinky, she told him the whole story. 
He listened with intense interest. 

“ And do you know her name ? ” he asked, at 
last. 

“ She says it is Berenice Ashford. You would 
laugh to hear the slow, painstaking way in which 
she pronounces it.” 

Mr. Goring had turned pale as she spoke. 

“ Excuse me, Miss Hurlburt, but I truly believe 
your Missy is my niece. My half-brother married 
against the wishes of his family, and I was the 
only one of them who ever made the acquaintance 
of his poor, pretty young wife. Even when he 
died, last year, the rest would not have any thing 
to do with her. She had a brother in America, 
and she wanted to come here, so I took passage for 
her in the “ Asia.” She insisted on coming in the 
second cabin, because it was quieter, she said ; but 
I think it was to save expense, as well. Tom had 
left her nothing ; and, after the rest of the family 
had rejected her, I could see that it hurt her pride 
cruelly to let me help her. She should be all right, 
she said, when she reached her brother. She was 


64 


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to write me when she got there, but I have never 
heard a word. I confess that the hope to hear of 
her was one motive for my coming to this coun- 
try.” 

“ But she was Mrs. Forsyth,” Miss Hurlburt 
said, in a curiously bewildered state of mind. 

“Certainly: Forsyth was my brother’s name. 
Berenice Ashford is the child’s Christian name. 
It was the name of Tom’s mother and mine.” 

“But I wonder you did not know Missy at 
once.” 

“ Of course to find her here was the very last 
thing I could have expected. Then I had not seen 
her for two or three years. I had communicated 
with my sister-in-law chiefly by letter ; and it was 
my man of business, and not myself, who put her 
on board the steamer ? ” 

“ But her brother ? Why has he never looked 
for his sister nor her child ? ” 

Goring smiled. 

“ You are bent on making me prove my title 
to Missy v as one does to stolen goods. I think 
Mrs. Forsyth must have gone on without writing 


MISSY. 


65 


to him in what steamer she was coming, and he 
probably did not know my address. Nor do I 
think he had ever shown any especial interest in 
his sister. It was only her indomitable pride which 
made her so determined to go to him, when the 
family of her husband rejected her. Now, I think, 
I have proved property, and I’m ready to pay the 
cost of advertising.” 

Just then Missy’s voice was heard in the hall, 
addressing a solemn exhortation to “ Pinky, me 
love,” on the duty of never being greedy at table. 
Miss Hurlburt called her in. 

“ Missy,” she said, “ what was your papa’s 
name ? ” 

“ I never knew ; did you ever know, Pinky, me 
love ? Mamma called him Tom.” 

“ And did you ever hear mamma speak of Uncle 
Richard? ” Mr. Goring broke in, eagerly. 

“ You do remember, Pinky, me love. It is 
wicked to look as if you didn’t. She said we 
couldn’t go to America and find Uncle John, if 
Uncle Richard had not given us the money. 1 
remember that, but I had ’most forgotten; so if 
5 


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you forgot, too, I shall not whip you, Pinky, me 
love.” 

44 I am your Uncle Richard,” the Englishman 
said with entire calmness of manner and gesture, 
but with tears in his voice and his eyes. Perhaps 
he expected the child to come at once to his arms ; 
but she stood there, the same composed, self-poised 
little mite as ever. 

44 Tour great-uncle, Pinky, me love,” she an- 
nounced, — manifesting an unexpectedly clear 
knowledge of degrees of kinship. “I think maybe 
we shall like him.” 

44 And you will go with me back to England ? ” 
he asked, eagerly ; for the little creature’s likeness 
to his dead brother stirred his heart. 

44 Does she say I must ? ” Missy asked, shyly, 
looking at Miss Hurlburt. 

44 1 will never say you must, Missy.” 

44 Then, please, Uncle Richard, I am afraid going 
in a ship wouldn’t agree with Pinky ; and we’d 
rather stay here, unless our Miss Hurlburt will go 
too.” 


MISSY. 


67 


“ Soli, soli ! ” and Mr. Goring smiled a quizzical 
smile, “ I see I have a heart to storm.” 

Whose heart he did not say. But he lingered 
some time in America, coming back at frequent 
intervals to visit Missy, as he said. The result 
was that when he returned to England little Missy 
had become ready to go with him, even at the risk 
of exposing “ Pinky me love,” to the perils of the 
sea ; and Miss Hurlburt, thinking she needed 
something other than masculine oversight, con- 
cluded to go with her and take care of her, having 
first changed her own name to Mrs. Goring. And 
they all said what a fortunate thing it was that 
Mrs. Smith was there to keep house. 


THE HEAD BOY OF EAGLEHEIGHT 
SCHOOL. 


HE boys in Eagleheight school made up their 



minds before the first fortnight of Max Gren- 
oble’s stay among them was over that he had no 
spirit. The truth was, they didn’t exactly under- 
stand him. They began when he first came to exer- 
cise upon him their usual arts of torture, — the 
initiation ceremonies for all new boys, — and found 
him practically a non-resistant. They could not, 
indeed, be quite sure that they even succeeded in 
vexing him : he was so imperturbable. At last Hal 
Somers, goaded to a degree of exasperation by the 
quiet calmness of the new boy, struck him, with 
the outcry, — 

“ There, boys, see how this suits the Quaker.” 

It was a sound, ringing blow; but Max only 
laughed a laugh which had a good deal of scorn in 
it, and said, — 


HEAD BOY OF EAGLEHEIGHT SCHOOL. 69 


u That’s very little to take.” Then regarding 
Hal curiously, “ I looked for a tougher blow than 
that. To see you, Somers, one would think you 
had a good deal of strength in your arms ; but a 
bad cause is always weak.” 

Hal would have liked then to “ pitch into him ” 
with whatever of strength he had ; but I think he 
was afraid. So he onjy turned on his heel, mut- 
tered something about a fellow not worth fighting 
with, and walked away. From that time those 
who did not vote Max Grenoble a coward pro- 
nounced him a mystery. He did not look at all as 
if he were wanting in spirit. He was a great strong 
Saxon of a fellow, with the head of a young Greek, 
covered with thick, short golden curls. I wish I 
could photograph him for you: he was such an 
embodiment of fresh, vigorous life, with his clear, 
fearless blue eyes, his short, smiling upper lip, his 
well-cut features. He was just the fellow to be 
popular, if only he had not been misunderstood in 
the first place, and especially if he had not hap- 
pened to incur Hal Somers’s enmity. 

Hal had been there two years, and was a posi- 


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tive force in the school. He had a large capacity 
in several other directions besides mischief. He 
had been the best scholar at Eagleheight before 
Max came to dispute his laurels with him ; a 
favorite, therefore, with the teachers, who always 
passed over his escapades, which were not few, as 
lightly as they could. In fact he was a sort of ring- 
leader of the faster boys, and he found time, in 
spite of his never failing in class, to plan out and 
head the execution of most of the jollifications 
which were the terror of the quiet villagers around 
Eagleheight. He seldom had any of his offen’ces 
positively brought home and proven, it is true, and 
the faculty of the institution liked him too well to 
condemn him on suspicion, or even to try very 
hard to strengthen suspicion into certainty. 

They, the aforesaid faculty, were not at all too 
ready to give Max Grenoble his due when he first 
came. He was not, like Hal, of their own train- 
ing. He had come to them from a rival school, 
and they were secretly ill pleased to find in him 
a dangerous competitor with their best scholar. 
But before six months were over they were 


HEAD BOY OF EAGLEHEIGHT SCHOOL. 71 


obliged to recognize his claims, and had even come 
to heartily like him. And, indeed, he was a fel- 
low, as Edmund Sparkler would have said, with 
no nonsense about him, and likely to make his 
own way anywhere. 

Whenever he had the opportunity to show his 
skill he was found to excel in all athletic sports; 
but this was not often, for the boys rather shunned 
him, and if there were enough for an undertaking 
without him he was usually left out of it. He 
had one friend, however, — a poor little weakling 
of a fellow, named Molyneux Bell, who had been 
friendless before Max came. Hal Somers and his 
roystering set had always shoved poor little “ Miss 
Molly,” as they called young Bell, to the wall; 
and it opened paradise to him when great, strong, 
bright, cheery Max Grenoble took him under his 
protecting wing. He gave as much as he received 
too; for Max had a strongly affectionate nature, 
and would have found himself desolate enough 
without some one to be fond of. Only “Miss 
Molly ” knew the secret of his friend’s non-resist- 
ance. One day Max had carried him in his arms 


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across a stream they came to in one of their walks, 
and set him gently down on the other side. Moly- 
neux looked up gratefully. 

“ What great strong arms you have, Max ! 
Why, you carry me as gently as a cradle. I 
believe you could whip Hal Somers himself, just 
as easy as nothing. Honest, now, don’t you think 
you could? O, I wish you would! The bo}^s 
wouldn’t dare then to call us 4 Miss Molly and 
her sister.’ ” 

Max laughed heartily. 

44 1 shouldn’t be much afraid to try it,” he said. 
44 The truth is, I have been awfully tempted to 
pitch in, sometimes. But last year I made up my 
mind that the Bible meant what it said when it 
forbade us to return evil for evil and railing for 
railing. It comes tough on human nature, though, 
boy human nature at any rate ; but there’d be no 
merit if there was no struggle, and we’re put here* 
to fight with the old man in us, as my father calls 
it.” 

44 But if you’d tell ’em why you never knock a 
fellow down when he sauces you.” 


HEAD BOY OF EAGLEHEIGHT SCHOOL. 73 


Max’s face crimsoned like a girl’s. 

“ Don’t you understand that a fellow couldn't 
tell such things? at least, I couldn’t. I should 
feel like the Pharisee in the Bible.” 

At the end of the school year there was to be a 
competitive examination. The credits for conduct 
and for recitations were to be taken into account, 
and the boy who stood highest on the books, and 
passed the best examination also, was to be the 
head boy of the school for the next year. From 
the first the field was abandoned to two competi- 
tors, — Hal Somers and Max Grenoble. All Hal’s 
emulation was aroused. He would succeed. He 
even forsook his old ways, and for weeks together 
engaged in nothing that was contraband. He had 
really fine abilities. He learned some things more 
readily than Max himself, and he felt that all his 
prestige depended on his securing this leadership. 
Max took the matter more coolly, but still he 
worked with all diligence. And so, till within ten 
days of the examination, they were neck and neck. 

Just then there came a dark night, — a warm, 
tempting June night, — when the moon was old, 


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and only the stars shone, like very far-away lamps 
indeed, through the dusk. A friend of Hal Som- 
ers was night monitor, and doubtless the tempta- 
tion afforded by such apparent security was too 
much for mischief-loving Hal. It chanced that 
Max Grenoble had received permission from one 
of the tutors to go to the neighboring village of an 
errand, and this fact was known only to his own 
room-mate, Molyneux Bell. About half-past nine 
he was returning, and for greater speed crossed a 
lot belonging to the president of the institution, 
which saved him an extra quarter of a mile of 
road. Half way across the lot he met Hal Somers 
with three other boys behind him, face to face. 
Hal carried a small lantern, and a great pair of 
shears such as are used to shear sheep. The light 
from the lantern struck upon the shears with a 
glitter which led Max to notice them. In the 
hands of one of Hal’s followers he saw the long, 
silvery tail of a white horse, and another carried a 
bunch of hair of a similar hue, evidently the mane 
of the same animal. 


“ Hal Somers ! ” 


HEAD BOY OF EAGLE HEIGHT SCHOOL. 75 


He spoke in his first moment of surprise, with- 
out consideration ; but there came no answer. The 
lantern was blown out in a moment, and the boys 
made the best of their way toward Eagleheight. 
As Max walked on more slowly he heard a pitiful 
neigh, and following the sound, he found Presi- 
dent King’s pet horse, utterly denuded of mane 
and tail. It was a joke carried a little too far 
even for Hal Somers’s effrontery, he thought to 
himself. If there was any thing outside of his 
school that President King loved and prided him- 
self on more than another, it was Snowflake. He 
gave her something of the fond care a family man 
bestows upon his children. Every afternoon she 
was the companion of his solitude, to whom he 
talked, with a sort of grave humor of his own, as 
he took his constitutional upon her back. He 
would not be likely to have much toleration for 
the young rascals who had shorn her of all her 
glory. Max went on, reported himself to Professor 
Yane, from whom he had obtained his leave of 
absence, and went to bed without hinting what he 
had seen, even to his room-mate. 


T 6 


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The next morning when the school went to 
chapel, there was a sense of thunder in the air. 
President King had seen his favorite, as those who 
were guilty did not need to be told, after one look 
at his lowering face. He conducted the devotions 
with more than his usual solemnity, and then 
detained the school a little longer. 

He uttered a few withering sentences, setting 
forth what had been done, and commenting satiri- 
cally upon the invention, the gentlemanliness, the 
good sense of young men whose brains could origi- 
nate nothing more brilliant or entertaining than 
the disfigurement of an unlucky quadruped, and 
an annoyance and insult to a teacher who had at 
least this claim upon their respect, that their 
parents had put them under his charge. Then he 
gave them the opportunity to confess their folly, 
assuring them that confession was good for the 
soul, and adding that he should take it as a favor 
if any one who knew any thing of the affair, 
whether personally concerned in it or not, would 
give him all the information in his power. It was 
not the practice at Eagleheight to ask any indi- 


HEAD BOY OF EAGLEHEIGHT SCI100L. 77 


vidual boy whether or not he had been guilty. It 
was one of President King’s notions that to ask 
such a question of any one who had not manliness 
enough to confess his fault voluntarily was only 
leading him into temptation, offering safety as a 
premium for lying. 

As the fellows filed out of chapel, Hal Somers 
said to his chum, — 

“ It’s all up with me about the leadership. Of 
course Grenoble will tell, especialty now the Prex 
makes a merit of it.” 

“ Fool if he wouldn’t,” was the reply, “ after 
the way we fellows have all treated him, too.” 

All day Hal was in hourly expectation of being 
sent for to an interview solemn and awful in the 
president’s room. But the hours went on and no 
summons came. About four o’clock he saw Max 
Grenoble go into the dreaded chamber of audience. 
Now, he thought, all would come out. Of course 
Max had gone to tell all he knew. Would he be 
suspended, or expelled, he wondered, or would the 
Prex be satisfied with giving him black marks 
enough to put the leadership altogether beyond his 


78 


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reach? Then- a plan came to him. The presi- 
dent’s room was on the lower floor, and over one 
of its windows grew a grape vine large enough to 
conceal him from observation. He would go there 
and listen. That it was a very mean thing to do 
he knew as well as any body, but temptation was 
too strong for him, and giving one look to make 
sure that he was not observed he hid himself away 
under the open window. The first words he heard 
were in the voice of the president : 

“ As soon as Vane told me you were out last 
evening, it occurred to me that you would know 
who was at the bottom of the affair, and it seems 
you do.” 

“ Yes, sir,” firmly and quietly. 

“ Then there can be no possible doubt that it is 
your duty to tell.” 

“ It cannot be my duty, sir, to be a sneak. This 
secret came into my hands by accident. If I had 
been monitor for the evening, it would, of course, 
be my duty to make it known. Not having been 
in any such capacity, I think were I to turn telltale 
I should be no gentleman.” 


HEAD BOY OF EAGLEHEIGHT SCHOOL. 79 


“ It’s a new order of things when fifty must 
come to fifteen to be told what it is to be a gentle- 
man,” the president said, hotly. “Perhaps you 
don’t know, sir, that if you persist in your resolu- 
tion you lose all hope of the leadership ? You will 
be considered an accessory in the crime, and you 
will lose as many credit marks as would be taken 
from the ringleader were he detected.” 

“ I can afford to lose those better than my own 
self-respect,” Max said, stoutly, and then added, 
“ I think you would have done the same, President 
King, when you were at my age.” 

Hal waited to hear no more, but edged cautiously 
from his place of concealment. He thought he 
was not above profiting by Max’s generosity. He 
tried to think Max was a fool, but there was an 
inner voice in his heart which whispered that there 
was something sublime in such folly, and, try as he 
might, this inner voice would not altogether be 
silenced. 

The days went on swiftly. Max kept his schol- 
arship up to the highest standard, but the twenty 
credit marks taken from his list put all hope of liis 
attaining the leadership out of the question. 


80 


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It was the very night before the examination 
when President King answered a tap on his door 
with his well known, resonant “ Come in.” His 
visitor was Hal Somers. 

The next morning, after prayers, the president 
said, very quietly, — 

“ Young gentlemen, before the examination 
commences I have to detain you long enough to 
perform a simple act of justice. I acquit Max 
Grenoble of all complicity in the misdemeanor 
committed on the night of the 14th of June ; the 
entire burden of the same having been assumed by 
Henry Somers, in behalf of himself, William 
Graves, George Saunders, and John Morse. And 
as this confession was voluntary, I shall visit upon 
the offenders no severer penalty than the loss of all 
their credit marks for the last quarter.” 

Poor little Molyneux Bell forgot time and place, 
and threw his handkerchief into the air with one 
glad shout : — 

“ I knew Max would come out right at last ; I 
knew he would.” 

So Max went back the next year to Eagleheight, 


HEAD BOY OF EA GLEIIEl GHT SCHOOL. 81 


as the head boy ; and under his leadership a new 
state of affairs was brought about. He led them 
not only in class, and in athletic exercises, but in 
all true manliness. They had found out at length 
that he had plenty of “pluck and grit,” even 
though he might not emulate Sayers or Heenan. 
One of his warmest friends was Hal Somers, in 
whose character enough nobility was latent to 
recognize at last the sterling worth even of his 
rival. 


6 


AGATHA’S LONELY DAYS. 


'pHEY had buried Agatha’s mother, — put her 
away under a sheltering tree, beloved of 
bird and breeze, which waved its boughs between 
her and the bending, changeful summer sky. 
Agatha thought no other spot in the world could 
be so pleasant or so dear ; and she longed, from 
the depths of her little, ten-years-old heart, to stay 
there with bird, and breeze, and tree, and the 
buried- mother, who must hear her voice, she 
thought, even though she could never reply to it 
again in all the years. 

Her father, pale with sorrow himself, had never 
come near enough to his child to be her comforter 
now. He talked little to any one of either his joys 
or his sorrows. Agatha loved him, partly because 
she had always been taught to love and have faith 
in him ; and, partly, too, because she knew well, 


AGATHA’S LONELY DAYS. 


83 


with that childish and intuitive perception which 
discovers every thing, how dear he was to her 
mother ; but she did not feel near to him, and she 
could not possibly have told him how she longed 
to stay there beside that grave. She made no pro- 
test when he took her hand to lead her away, 
though it seemed to her that she left her heart 
behind her, and that the lump in her breast was a 
cold stone to which warmth would never come 
back any more. 

She went home, and some one took off her little 
black hat, and put on an apron over her mourning 
gown, and then she was left in peace to sit at the 
window, and look out toward the spot where they 
had laid her mother, and wonder what was to 
become of Tier . They called her to supper, but she 
was not hungry, — she thought she never should be 
again, — and there was no mother to beguile her 
with dainty morsels. When they found she did 
not want to come they let her alone, and still she 
sat there and wondered. 

At last the twilight fell, and in the dusk her 
father came to her. He loved her very dearly; 


84 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


and especially now, that her mother was gone, and 
only she was left to him, he felt for her an unspeak- 
able tenderness; literally unspeakable, for he did 
not know how to utter one word of it to 'his child. 
He longed to comfort her, — to tell her how dear 
she was to him, — but he could not. He sat down 
beside her, and looked at her little pale face, out- 
lined against the western window, with such a 
depth of pity that it seemed to make his voice 
quieter and colder than ever when lie spoke, 
because it required such an effort to speak at all. 

“ To-morrow, Agatha, I shall take you to your 
Aunt Irene. Every girl needs a woman’s care, 
and she will watch over you as faithfully as if you 
were her own.” 

Agatha never dreamed of objecting. She tried 
to think that she might as well be in one place as 
another, for she shouldn’t live long anywhere 
without her mother. But she dreaded Aunt 
Irene’s watching, as she dreaded few things in the 
world. She had made visits now and then at the 
quiet old homestead of which this aunt was mis- 
tress, and it seemed to her, on such occasions, that 


AGATHA’S LONELY DAYS. 


85 


Aunt Irene did nothing but watch her from the 
time she entered the house ; and in those days it 
had taken all the sunshine of her mother’s joyous 
nature to gild the visits into some substitute for 
the pleasures other children took in their vacations. 
Now, to go without her mother — all alone — and 
be “ watched over ” by her aunt ! She began to 
know that she had a heart, after all, by its fright- 
ened fluttering. 

Aunt Irene was her father’s sister, with all the 
Raymond peculiarities of pride, and reserve, and 
silence, which made him half a stranger to his own 
child, intensified in her by her life of seclusion and 
of absolute authority over herself and her posses- 
sions. Her experiences had been narrow, and her 
aims had been narrow also. Mr. Raymond saw 
this, his one sister, always at her best ; and, through 
long knowledge of her, he understood her really 
trustworthy and excellent qualities. He felt that he 
was doing for Agatha the best which fate now per- 
mitted him to do, in confiding her to this guidance, 
so sure to be wise, as he believed, even if not 
loving. 


86 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


The long car-ride ilext day was almost a silent 
one. Agatha would have rejected with hot juve- 
nile scorn, the idea that the presence or absence of 
any material comforts could affect her grief ; and 
yet she would have felt a little less desolate, I 
think, if the heat had not been so intense, the dust 
so choking, and the seat so hard and straight. 

When she had made the journey in other years 
with her mother, how much shorter the way had 
seemed. The fresh linen frocks she used to wear 
were so much easier and cooler than the stifling 
black gown she had on to-day ; and somehow her 
mother knew just when to open the windows and 
when to shut them, and if the seat was straight 
and hard, there was always mamma’s lap or 
shoulder to lean against; and she forgot to be 
weary when mamma beguiled the time by poem 
or story. But her father rode silently, looking 
into vacancy for a face he would never see again ; 
and after he had once bought Agatha’s ticket, and 
seated her beside him, it did not occur to him to 
do any thing to relieve the monotony of the long, 
dusty ride. 


AGATHA’S LONELY DAYS. 


87 


It was dusk when the stage from the railway 
station set them down at Aunt Irene’s door. 
Agatha walked up the path timidly. It was a 
long, straight path, and either side of it grew 
thoroughly well-disciplined flowers ; a rosebush 
on one side, just opposite to a rosebush on the 
other, — Agatha wondered if either of them would 
have dared to bear one rose more than the other 
did, — a peony on one side and its mate opposite ; 
so of a syringa bush, a flowering almond, and a root 
of lilies. Between the well-marshalled ranks of 
flowers, which somehow made the child think of 
soldiers on guard, she followed her father up to the 
door, where Aunt Irene waited, grim chatelaine. 

Mr. Raymond shook hands with his sister, and 
then said gravely, — 

“ Irene, I have brought you my poor, motherless 
little girl,” and Aunt Irene put out her firm, strong, 
unyielding hand and took the child’s into it, then 
bent and — not kissed her, kisses belonged to the 
dead days — but laid her lips on her cheek, and so 
Agatha went in. 

Every thing was good and substantial in Aunt 


88 


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Irene’s house. You found there no frail stands 
which a careless touch might throw over, no brittle 
ornaments, no egg-shell china. The carpets were 
dark and rich and sombre. The tables and chairs 
were all of solid wood, and stood high and square. 
The sofas were heavy and firm, and the whole air 
of the place was grave and respectable, as Aunt 
Irene’s surroundings should have been. I am not 
sure that any light, modern, fancy articles, sugges- 
tive of elegant idleness, had they been placed in 
her rooms, would not themselves have perceived 
their unsuitableness, and trundled off on their own 
castors. 

The supper which awaited the travellers fol- 
lowed the prevailing fashion of the house. The 
biscuits were three times as large as the biscuits oil 
other tea-tables. There were no frisky rolls, no 
light-minded whips or wafers. But there were 
good old-fashioned preserve, serious-looking cake, 
and substantial slices of cold meat. 

Aunt Irene herself, sitting behind the tea-urn — 
solid silver, of course — comported* with all the 
rest. Siie was a solid woman, with no superfluous 


AGATHA’S LONELY DAYS. 


89 


flesh, and yet with a well-fed, well-to-do aspect, 
which was unmistakable. Her head was high and 
narrow, her features good, her strong hair had dis- 
dained to turn gray, and her eyes were keen if 
cold. Her lips, which had never cooed over 
babies, or soothed the sorrows of little children, or 
talked nonsense to any listener, were thin, as to 
such seldom-used lips seemed natural. They shut 
tightly over all her secrets. 

Agatha’s head began to ache furiously, and she 
could not eat. The room swam round and round 
till she felt as if she were the centre of a rolling 
ball, and her chair rocked, she thought, and she 
was slipping off it, when her father saw her white, 
strange face and wavering figure, and sprang up 
just in time to catch her in his arms. 

“ She is sick, Irene,” he said. “ Where is her 
room? Let me carry her there.” 

While he went upstairs with her she revived, 
and lifted her tired head from his shoulder to look' 
into his eyes. 

“ I wish you were not going away, papa,” she 
ventured to say. 


90 


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“ I can’t stay on in the old places, where I have 
lived with your mother, without her,” was the 
answer which came, and which was like giving 
her a key wherewith to unlock her father’s heart, 
and so made the two nearer to each other than 
they had ever been before. 

“ Some time will you come back, and let me live 
with you ? ” she whispered, wondering at her own 
rashness. 

“ If you are good, dear, and learn to be womanly 
and helpful, and to take care of yourself, I will 
come back for you, or you shall come to me, and 
we will be together always.” 

No one knew with what passionate yet timid 
hope Agatha’s little heart beat as she lay there 
alone on her strange, high bed. Womanly and 
helpful, — that was what he had said, and she 
would be just that. She would do all Aunt Irene 
said, and never mind how much she was watched, 
since watching might help to make her nearer 
right, and get her ready all the sooner to go to her 
father and be his comfort. 

The very next day he left her. The death of 


AGATHA’S LONELY DAYS. 


91 


his wife had seemed to sweep away all his old 
landmarks. He had been, hitherto, a quiet unad- 
venturous man contented with his narrow routine 
of daily duty, which always brought him back to 
the tenderness of her welcoming smile. Now that 
smile was frozen for ever on her cold lips, and a 
strange restlessness possessed him. He had meant 
to stay a few days with Agatha in her new home, 
but he felt as if the inaction would drive him mad, 
so he hurried away ; and a week afterward Aunt 
Irene showed Agatha his name in the passenger 
list of a European steamer. 

It was June then, and the gay summer went on 
working its daily miracles round Agatha’s quiet 
home. Bright birds sang to her, and gay flowers 
bloomed for her picking ; and nature ran riot in a 
wood a quarter of a mile away, where the flowers 
asked no leave of Aunt Irene to blow, or the birds 
to sing. The child used to go there when her 
daily tasks were done, but she carried with her so 
sad a heart that nothing seemed to cheer her. She 
wondered what all the growing things were so glad 
about, in the summer weather, and, remembering 


92 


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an old phrase she had heard, she concluded it was 
because nature was their mother, and nature never 
died. 

“ Oh, Mother Nature, I wish you were a relative 
of mine ! ” she used to cry, sometimes, with uncon- 
scious quaintness ; but before the summer was 
over, leaning her head so much on the mosses, a 
sense of kinship began to thrill in her pulses, and 
before she knew it the pain in her heart was eased 
a little, and she began to think of her mother, not 
as buried up and hidden away from her, but as near 
to her and waiting for her. 

Meantime she never forgot her father’s words, — 
“ Womanly and helpful,” — they were the keynote 
of her life. Aunt Irene wondered at her. She 
had thought her a mischievous little elf in the old 
days, but there was no mischief in her now. She 
herself respected no more religiously the rules of 
the household than did this little quiet child. 

As for trouble, why the creature gave none, — 
she was learning to do every thing for herself. At 
last even Aunt Irene grew half frightened at this 
still patience, which she felt must be unnatural to 


AGATHA'S LONELY DAYS. 


93 


childhood. She began to wish that she could hear 
Agatha laugh or shout, — that sometimes the child 
would tear her gowns, when she had on her oldest 
ones, at least, — that she would show some self-will, 
some little trace of her descent from apple-eating 
Adam of the old time. 

She wrote to her brother how good and quiet 
his little girl was ; but her heart misgave her. 
She did not know what more she could do to make 
her small inmate comfortable, but she had a vague 
sense that Agatha was living an unchildlike life, 
and was less happy than in the old days when the 
little girl and her mother came there together. 

Mother Nature has her own methods of exacting 
compensation, and for Agatha’s overstrained and 
unnatural life pay-day came in the autumn. It had 
grown too cold to lie with her ear on the mosses, 
listening to the earth’s pulse-beats, and the child 
sat quietly within doors, until one day she turned 
very pale and rolled off her stiff, straight chair to 
the carpet, and Aunt Irene picked her up, a lighter 
weight now than in the spring-time, and carried her 
to her room. 


94 


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Dr. Greene was sent for at once, and he looked 
at his little patient very gravely, and then whis- 
pered “ typhoid ” to her aunt. 

Aunt Irene wrote a hurried line to Agatha’s 
father, and then took up her post at the bedside, 
which for five weeks she scarcely left. She had a 
heart, only long ago she had concluded it was an 
inconvenience and locked it up ; but now it broke 
loose from its confinement and half frightened her 
by its th robbings. 

Her brother was very dear to her. She had 
loved him all his life, after the deep, silent, un- 
demonstrative fashion of those who love but few ; 
and now if this fresh grief was to come upon him 
how could she bear to see him suffer? But she 
did not allow these thoughts to interfere with her 
usefulness at Agatha’s bedside. Day and night she 
watched over the child, who never once knew her, 
but who constantly mistook her for her mother, 
and clung to her passionately in the delirium of 
her fever. 

“ O mother ! ” she would say, “ I thought I 
never, never should see you again. No one was 


AGATHA'S LONELY DAYS. 


95 


cross to me, mamma darling ; but no one loved me 
since you went away. I’ve been trying to grow 
womanly and helpful, so papa would be glad to 
have me with him by and by ; but now you’ve 
come and you’ll love me whether I’m good or 
not.” 

Then again she seemed roaming through the 
woods. 

“ Hark,” she would say, “ hear how the birds sing, 
and see the gay flowers swing in the wind ! Their 
mother doesn’t die, and they have no aunts. 
O birdies ! you don’t know how cold Aunt Irene’s 
lips are.” 

And Aunt Irene, listening, bent over the bed 
with tears blinding her eyes. Had her life been all 
a failure ? she asked herself. , She had tried to do 
her duty: was it all nothing, because she hadn’t 
loved? Oh! if Agatha would but get well she 
would find some way to make her happy. 

Before the crisis of the child’s fever came, her 
father had arrived. The letter found him in Paris, 
and he had set out in twenty-four hours upon his 
homeward journey. 


96 


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“ Is slie alive ? ” he asked, when his sister met 
him at the door, and started back, shocked by his 
haggard face. 

“ Yes, she lives, and the doctor says her fever 
must turn soon. Come and see her.” 

The little flushed face had never been so beau- 
tiful in its brightest days of health and joy, as now, 
with the clustering rings of hair framing in scarlet 
cheeks and large, strangely brilliant eyes. The 
father’s heart almost broke as he stood there, unable 
to make her recognize his presence. While he 
watched, she said what she had said so often during 
the hours of that wasting sickness, — 

“ I have tried to be womanly and helpful. I 
think papa will want me after awhile. I hope 
so for Aunt Irene’s lips are cold.” 

How keenly he reproached himself then for 
having left her, only God knew. He was a silent 
man, as I have said, and silently he shared Aunt 
Irene’s vigil without even thinking of rest after 
his journey. 

The next night Dr. Greene waited also by that 
bedside for the crisis he foresaw. At last the 
child slept. 


AGATHA'S LONELY DAYS. 


97 


“ When she wakes we shall know what to ex- 
pect,” he said, and went away into the next room 
for a little rest. But the father and the aunt 
never moved. It was midnight, and every thing 
was strangely, unnaturally still, as it always 
seems to watchers in the middle of the night, 
when they heard Agatha call out of the hush and 
the stillness, with a sudden, glad cry of recogni- 
tion, — 

“ O mamma ! mamma ! ” 

“ Is she dying ? ” Mr. Raymond’s look asked, for 
his lips refused to speak, and his sister’s face made 
answer, “ Not yet.” 

The hours, the long, slow hours went on. The 
night grew darker and deeper. Then above the 
hills there stretched a faint line of dawn-light 
which deepened at length to rose, and then was 
shot through by a golden arrow from the rising 
sun. And then, as the dawning glory touched the 
little white, still face upon the pillows, the eyes 
opened, and a voice — Agatha’s own natural voice, 
but oh, so faint and low ! — said, softly but 
gladly, — 


7 


MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


98 


“ I have seen mamma. I wanted to go with her, 
hut she said papa and Aunt Irene both needed me, 
and I was to stay here and grow well and happy. 
And so I shall.” 

“ And so, please God, you shall,” Dr. Greene 
said, cheerily, having come in from the next room ; 
and the father sank upon his knees by the bedside, 
with some murmured words, which only the Father 
ip heaven understood, upon his lips; and Aunt 
Irene hurried off, she said, to get something for the 
child to take, but she stopped a long time upon 
the way. 

“I knew you were here, papa,” and Agatha 
reached out her thin little fingers to touch the 
bowed head beside her. “ I knew, because mamma 
told me.” 

Strangely enough, all her timidity had vanished. 
Mamma had said that papa and Aunt Irene needed 
her, and that was enough. Soon her aunt came 
in, and she looked up, gratefully. 

“ You have been so good to me, Aunt Irene, ” 
she said, “ so good that I thought it was mamma 
who was tending me, but I know now it was you, 


AGATHA’S LONELY DAYS. 


99 


and I think you must love me, because you have 
kept me alive.” 

And so my story of Agatha’s lonely days ends; 
for after this she never was lonely any more. Her 
father and aunt had learned that little hearts need 
something more than to be clothed and fed ; and 
Agatha had learned, by their care for her, their 
love for her, and never doubted again that she had 
her own place in their hearts. 

But had she seen her own mamma? you ask. 
Ah, who knows the mysteries of the border land 
between life and death ? Some of you will believe 
that she but dreamed a dream ; and others, per- 
chance, will think the Father, who has so often 
sent His angels to comfort His earthly children, 
sent to her the home-faced angel whom her heart 
loved. I cannot tell. I only know that Agatha 
believed always that a beloved voice not of this 
world had spoken to her. 


THIN ICE. 


HE little village of Westbrook seemed to have 



been standing still, while all the rest of the 
world had gone on. The people lived very much 
as their fathers and grandfathers had lived before 
them. They were all farmers except the doctor 
and the minister. 

The doctor was a very skilful man ; but he 
had been reared on a Westbrook farm, and when 
he went out into the world to get his medical 
education he had brought back with him, to quiet 
Westbrook, only the knowledge he sought, and 
none of the airs and graces of town life. 

The minister, too, was Westbrook born and 
bred, and his wife had scarcely ever keen outside 
the town in all her days, so that there was no 
one in the simple community to set extravagant 
fashions, or turn foolish heads by gayety or splen- 
dor. 



THIN 

































* 










I • 










THIN ICE. 


101 


It was, therefore, as much of an event as if 
Queen Victoria herself were to come and spend 
the winter in Boston, when it became generally- 
known that a rich widow lady and her son were 
to come, the last of September, and very proba- 
bly stay on through the winter under Dr. Simms’s 
roof. A famous city physician, with whom Dr. 
Simms had studied once, had recommended him 
and Westbrook to Mrs. Rosenburgh, when it be- 
came necessary for her to take her puny boy in- 
to some still, country retreat. 

They came during the last golden days of 
September, and all Westbrook was alive with 
interest about them. The lady looked delicate, 
but she was as pretty as she was pale, and her 
boy was curiously like her, — as pale, as pretty, 
almost as feminine. 

There was plenty of opportunity to see them, 
for the city doctor had given orders that the 
young gentleman should keep out of doors all 
the time ; so, mornings, he and his mother were 
always to be seen in their low, luxurious car- 
riage, drawn by high-stepping bay horses, and 


102 


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driven by a faithful, careful, middle-aged man, 
with iron-gray hair and an impenetrable face. 

Sometimes, in the afternoons, they would all 
be out again, but oftener Mrs. Rosenburgh re- 
mained at home, and her son drove, for himself, 
a pair of pretty black ponies, while the impene- 
trable, iron-gray man sat behind, ready to seize 
the reins in case of accident. 

At first the boy’s face seemed often drawn by 
pain, or white with weariness, and ho would 
look round him listlessly, as he drove, with 
eyes that saw nothing, or at least failed to find 
any object of interest. But the clear autumn air 
proved invigorating, and when the glorious, pris- 
matic days of late October came he looked as if, 
indeed, he had been re-created. 

And now one could see that he began to take 
a natural, human interest in what went on around 
him. He would drive up his little pony car- 
riage to the wall, and look over it to watch the 
apple-pickers and the harvesters. No one spoke 
to him, and he spoke to no one. The lads of 
his own age, who watched his ponies with boyish 


THIN ICE. 


103 


envy, never dreamed that the owner of these 
fairy coursers could be as shy as one of them- 
selves, and, indeed, as much more shy as delicate 
weakness naturally is than rosy strength. They 
thought his silence was pride, and felt a half- 
defiant hatred of him accordingly. 

Yet many and many a day he went home to 
his mother, and sitting beside her with his head 
upon her knee, cried out, in very bitterness, — 

“ Oh if I only could be like one of those healthy 
boys! How gladly I’d give up Pease-blossom 
and Mustard-seed, to be able to run about as 
they do! Shall I never, never be strong, mam- 
ma?” 

And she would comfort him with the happy 
truth that every day he was growing stronger, 
and that she expected him to be her great, brave 
boy, by and by, who would take care of her all 
the days of her life. 

Meantime, other boys, in other homes, talked 
to other mothers. For the very first time the 
evil spirit of envy had crept into quiet West- 
brook. 


104 


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Why should Ralph Rosenburgh have every 
thing he wanted, and they nothing ? What 
clothes he wore, — and a watch, a real gold watch 
they had seen him take out of his pocket, — and 
those ponies ; for wherever they began they al- 
ways ended with those ponies. And, as not all 
the mothers in Westbrook were wise, any more 
than elsewhere in the world, while the wise ones 
would say that strong boy-legs were worth more 
than horses’ legs, the weak ones would foster the 
evil spirit, and answer, — 

“ He ain’t a bit better than you are, with all his 
watches and ponies. Pride will have a fall some 
day, see if it don’t, and he may be glad enough 
to stand in your shoes yet, before he dies.” 

Jack Smalley was the son of one of these 
injudicious mothers, and so his envy grew, un- 
checked ; till he nourished a vigorous hatred 
for Ralph Rosenburgh in his heart, without ever 
having exchanged a single word with him. 

It was a hatred, however, of which its object 
never could have dreamed. He had been so 
accustomed to be petted and pitied, and he was 


THIN ICE. 


105 


so very sorry for himself, that he could not be a 
wide-awake, vigorous, ball-playing, leaping, run- 
ning boy, it would never have occurred to him 
that any one else could fail to see his condition 
in the same light. 

So he went steadily on the even tenor of his 
wa} r , gaining something day by day and week 
by week, and hoping — how earnestly no one 
knew — for the happy time when Pease-blossom 
and Mustard-seed might stand idle in their stalls, 
and he go about on his own feet with the rest. 

The cold weather came on early that year. 
Before the middle of December Westbrook pond 
was frozen over, and then began the* winter’s fun. 
Every afternoon Ralph Rosenburgh drove his 
ponies down to the very edge of the pond, and 
sat there for awhile, a patient looker-on at the 
frolics he could not share. 

With Christmas, however, there came to him 
from the fond, maternal Santa Claus, a chair 
constructed on purpose for pushing over the ice, 
and then he became a daily partaker in the fes- 
tivities upon the pond. The chair was modelled 


106 


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after a certain kind of invalid, garden chair, 
which is arranged to be either propelled by some 
one else from behind, or by the occupant turning 
a kind of crank at the sides. 

Ralph soon learned to manage it for himself, 
and finding himself strong enough to do so, he 
used to make the iron-gray man stay with the 
ponies, while he himself moved round among the 
skaters. 

And, now that he seemed really one of them- 
selves, the young people, all except Jack Smal- 
ley, began to feel a kindly interest in him. Jack 
alone went on hating him more and more, find- 
ing daily fresh causes of offence in this boy who 
wore velvet and fur in place of his own coarse 
gray cloth, and woollen, hand-knit comforter. 
What was he, this puny wretch, without pluck 
enough to stand on his own legs, that he should 
wear the garments of a young prince? You see 
that Master Smalley had the primitive idea of 
young princes, and supposed them clad in ever- 
lasting velvet and ermine. But there were no 
princes in America, thank Heaven, and nobody 


THIN ICE. 


107 


in Westbrook wanted fools round who tried to 
look like king’s sons. Very innocent of trying 
to look like any one was poor Ralph, if the truth 
had been known, — this mother’s darling of a 
boy, who took no more thought of his attire 
than a weed, but whom Mrs. Rosenburgh wrapped 
assiduously in all that was softest and warmest, 
as she had, all his life, surrounded him with 
warmth and softness. 

After a while there came a January afternoon, 
over which a gray, moist sky brooded. Already 
the ice had shown some symptoms of breaking 
up, and everybody was out, making the most of 
it while it lasted. 

Among the rest Ralph Rosenburgh came down 
to the pond, — left Pease-blossom and Mustard- 
seed in the iron-gray man’s charge, as usual, 
and began to propel himself over the ice, with 
arms whose increasing vigor was a daily and 
happy astonishment .to himself. 

At last he wandered away a little from most 
of the skaters. Pie felt himself and his chair 
rather in their way, they were wheeling and 


108 


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zigzagging so swiftly, and he moved along the 
pond quite .rapidly toward the eastern end. 

It chanced that no one noticed his course 
except Jack Smalley, and Jack knew that he was 
going directly toward a place where the ice had 
been recently cut, and where it was thin and 
treacherous now. Slowly Jack followed him. 

“ I’d like to see him and that fine chair of his 
get a good ducking,” Jack muttered. “ It would 
serve him right. I guess all them prince’s feath- 
ers and fineries would look a little more like 
common folks’, after tl^'d been soused.” 

I do not think another and darker possibility 
crossed Jack’s mind. Hating Ralph Rosenburgh 
though he did, I do not think one wish for his 
death had ever entered his heart. He himself 
had been in the water, time and again, and got 
no other harm from it than perhaps a hard cold. 
He did not realize what a different thing it would 
be for this delicate invalid, seated in his heavy 
chair. And so Ralph propelled himself along 
toward destruction, and Jack, with an evil sneer 
on his face, skated slowly after him. 


THIN ICE. 


109 


Suddenly a third figure shot from the group 
of skaters, — the fastest skater of them all, and 
the one boy in the world whom Jack Smalley 
loved, — his own cousin, Nelson Smalley. 

He, too, had turned his eyes and seen in what 
fatal direction the chair with the delicate, gold- 
en-haired invalid in it was tending. He did not 
speak a word : he had but one thought, — to 
reach Ralph Rosenburgh in time to save him. 
He skated on, with the swiftness of light. And 
Jack Smalley saw him coming, nearing him, 
passing him, on toward the thin ice. Now, in- 
deed, he shrieked at the top of his voice, — 

“ Nell, Nell, come back. The ice out there 
is thin. Come back — come back. Don’t you 
hear?” 

“ I hear,” floated backward on the wind from 
the flying figure ; “ I hear, but don’t you see 
Rosenburgh? I must save him.” 

Then Jack himself skated after, making what 
speed he might. But he seemed to himself slow 
as a snail ; and already Rosenburgh was very 
near the treacherous ice, and Nelson was almost 


110 


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up with him, flying like the wind. He heard 
Nelson’s voice : 

“ Stop, Rosenburgh, stop. The ice beyond you 
is just a crust. Stop, you will be drowned.” 

And then he heard a plash, and looked. It 
was Nelson, who had gone on, and gone under, 
unable to arrest, in time, his own headlong 
speed. And then, while he himself was shriek- 
ing madly for help, he saw Rosenburgh, prince’s 
feathers and all, just throw himself out of his 
chair, and down into the cold, seething water 
where Nelson Smalley had gone under. 

The ice grew thin suddenly, just where the 
saw had cut it squarely away, so the chair stood 
still upon the solid ice, and by that Rosenburgh 
held with one hand, while with the other he 
grasped the long hair of Nelson Smalley, who 
was rising for the first time. Excitement was 
giving him unnatural strength, but for how long 
could he hold on ? 

Now, at last, the skaters had perceived the 
real state of the case, and such a wail as one 
might hear afterwards through his dreams for 


THIN ICE . 


Ill 


ever, went up to the bending sky. Hurry, all 
who can. Run, iron-gray man, as you never 
ran before, or how shall you drive home to that 
boy’s waiting mother ? 

How was it done ? How is it ever done ? 
Who can ever tell in such a crisis? I do not 
know how long they were in reaching the thin ice, 
for at such times moments seem hours, and 
seconds are bits of eternity. But Rosenburgh 
held on, and the iron-gray man threw himself 
flat upon the cracking ice, with the boys holding 
fast to him, and drew them both out, and then 
Rosenburgh turned limp and white on his hands, 
and whether he was dead or not he could not 
tell. 

There were enough others to care for Smalley, 
and already the older ones had begun trying to 
restore him, and some of the younger were run- 
ning in various directions for wiser aid. So the 
iron-gray man just lifted his own young master 
in his arms, and got him straight into the pony 
wagon, and drove Pease-blossom and Mustard- 
seed home as they had never been driven be- 
fore. 


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At the gate he met Dr. Simms coming out, 
and told his story in a few words. It was almost 
an hour before the blue eyes opened again, and 
the mother felt sure that her boy was still hers 
to have and to hold, to love and to cherish. In- 
deed, it was many days before she felt altogether 
safe and sure about him. She was constantly 
expecting some after consequences from his ex- 
posure, — some fever, or cough, or terrible ner- 
vous prostration. But, strangely enough, he 
seemed to be none the worse ; and one day, after 
a careful examination of him, Dr. Simms said to 
her, — 

“I venture to tell you, now, what I have 
thought all along. This has been the very best 
thing for him that could possibly have happened. 
The severe shock was exactly what he needed, 
though certainly it was what I should not have 
dared to take the responsibility of subjecting 
him to. He is going to be the better and stronger 
for it.” 

“ And the brave, splendid fellow who was risk- 
ing his own life to save him ? ” 


THIN ICE. 


113 


“ Is all right too. Duckings are good for boys, 
not a doubt of it. Trust me, this cold bath will 
go far to make a man of yours.” 

And the doctor was right. The languid pulses 
which that awful peril had quickened never 
throbbed so languidly again. It was Ralph Ro- 
senburgh’s awakening to a new life. Somehow 
the shyness in him passed away with the weak- 
ness, *and he became a general favorite. 

The boys no longer envied him his ponies, 
when one or other of them was always asked to 
share his drives ; and their cure was completed 
when he grew strong enough to take part in all 
their sports, when Pease-blossom and Mustard- 
seed were left to “ eat their heads off” in their 
stall, and Ralph Rosenburgh and his chosen and 
dearest friend, Nelson Smalley, scaled rocks and 
climbed hills with the best of them. 

This strong friendship would have cost Jack 
Smalley some envious pangs, perhaps, if the 
awful terror of that January afternoon had not 
made him afraid of the evil in his own soul. 


8 


MY LOST SISTER: A CONFESSION. 


T HAVE a confession to make. When I went 
home from my grandmother’s, — being set 
down at the. home-door by the stage-driver, in 
whose care I had been placed, — and found my 
little sister in my mother’s arms, a quick growing 
hate of her struck its black roots in my heart. I 
know that this seems unnatural. In most houses 
the baby is the very light and joy of them, — the 
little idol to whom, from the least to the greatest, 
the whole family do willing homage. 

But remember that I had grown to be ten 
years old, with no rival near the throne, accus- 
tomed to be the first object with my father and 
mother, petted, indulged, as much “ the baby ” 
as if I had worn white long clothes. It was not 
strange that it should come hard to be deposed 
from my throne of babyhood in one moment. 


MY LOST SISTER: A CONFESSION. 115 


When I went into the house, Nurse Sikes met 
me with a smile which struck me like a blow. 

“ Somebody’s got her nose broke, I guess,” she 
said, with a tantalizing laugh. 

Before this, no one had spoken to me about 
the new-comer, and there, I think, was where 
the wrong began ; but the woman’s meaning 
flashed into my mind in a moment, and I tossed 
my head scornfully, without speaking. Nurse 
Sikes was probably not an ill-natured woman, — 
she could not have been, since no face was so 
welcome as hers in the sick rooms of all the 
neighborhood, — but she was a very injudicious 
one. I suppose my idle, vain contempt and in- 
dignation amused her, and so she went on pro- 
voking me. 

“ Ho, ho, Miss Fine Airs ! doesn’t want to see 
her baby sister, don’t she? Well, to tell the 
truth, I don’t think you’ll be much missed. Papa 
and Mamma are pretty well wrapped up in Miss 
Baby. Shes a novelty, you know, and I guess 
she’ll be taken care of, even if you don’t trouble 
yourself.” 


116 


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I would not for worlds have let her see the 
passion of grief and rage which shook me. I 
went out of her sight, and fled, not to my own 
room, which opened from my mother’s, but to a 
remote spare chamber, and there I bore my pain 
alone. 

To cry would have infinitely relieved me, but 
my evil pride restrained me from that. They 
should not see my eyes red, and know how I 
felt ; I would die first, I said, bitterly, to myself, 
I, who had cried out every sorrow of my life, 
hitherto, on my mother’s tender bosom. After a 
while I heard them calling me, — 

“ Annie ! Annie ! Annie ! Why, the child came 
in half an hour ago. Where is she ? ” 

Then I knew I must go down. So I looked at 
myself in the glass, and saw a face which, indeed, 
no tears stained, but which was disfigured by 
pride and passion; and thinking to myself, — 
‘No one will notice how I look, now,’ I went 
to my mother’s room. 

“Come here, my darling,” her gentle voice 
said, “ come and look at baby.” 


MY LOST SISTER: A CONFESSION. 117 


Baby! Could she not say a fond word to 
me, after I had been away from home two weeks, 
without bringing in baby ! I moved reluctantly 
toward her. 

“ Baby is twelve days old,” she went on, wist- 
fully, seeing my sullen mien. “I wouldn’t let 
any one tell you, for I thought it would be such 
a surprise.” 

“ A surprise, indeed ! ” I echoed her word 
with a scorn in my voice, which must have pained 
that gentle heart sorely. 

“ Isn’t she sweet ? ” and, still trying to win my 
love for her new treasure, mamma uncovered the 
little, dimpled, rosy face, and held it toward me. 

“ I suppose so ; I don’t think I care for babies,” 
I said, ungraciously. 

“But you do care for mamma, and you haven’t 
so much as kissed me yet, my darling.” 

Perhaps if, even then, she could have put her 
arms around me, and held me fast against her 
loving heart, as she used to when I was grieved 
or naughty, it might have driven away the evil 
spirit, and made me her own child again; but 


118 


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she could not, for there, in her lap, was baby. 
So I took her kiss passively, returned it coldly, and 
then went away. 

It seems so incredible to my grown-up self, 
looking back upon it, that I could have gone on 
hating my baby sister more and more, that I can 
scarcely expect you to believe it ; and I think I 
would hardly write out this, my confession, did 
I not hope it might lead some other, tempted as 
I was, to examine her heart in time, and root 
out from it the evil weed of jealousy, which bears 
always such bitter fruit. 

From the first, little Lilias, or Lily, as they all 
called her, was a singularly lovely child. As a 
baby, she cried very little, and never in anger. 
Nothing but real pain ever made the red lips 
quiver, or filled the violet eyes with tears. She 
never could see any face more grave than usual 
without trying, in her baby fashion, to brighten it. 
I can remember, oh, how distinctly, times when 
my father would come home, worn and tired, 
and she would, quite untold, go through her 
little rdle of accomplishments till she won a 


MY LOST SISTER: A CONFESSION . 119 


smile from him, clapping her fairy hands, nodding 
her gleaming, golden head, showing her two 
small teeth, — all the little winning wiles she 
had. 

She was a very frail, delicate child, always, 
and she did not walk nearly as early as other 
children. But she talked very soon indeed. She 
was scarcely ten months old, when she learned 
to call us all by our names ; and, strangely 
enough, mine was the first name she spoke. 
“ Nan! Nan ! Nan ! ” she would call me, half 
the day, like a little silver-voiced parrot. 

She was very fond of me, in a certain way. I 
never tended her unless I was obliged, and my 
mother, noticing with deep grief my spirit toward 
my little sister, waited for the evil feeling to 
wear itself out, and seldom called on me to 
amuse the child, or to give up for her sake any 
whim or' fancy of my own. Lily was not used, 
therefore, to have me hold or play with her. 

Perhaps she thought I could not, but it seemed 
to afford her infinite satisfaction just to have me in 
her sight. It may be she felt, in some vague 


120 


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way, that I was nearer babyhood than the rest, 
and so more of her kind. At any rate, she always 
seemed perfectly happy and content when she 
could watch me, at any of my pursuits ; and 
when I left the room, the little silvery voice 
would call after me, — 

“Nan! Nan! Nan!” 

She was a full year and a half old before she 
began to walk, and then she was so small and 
delicate that she looked as you might fancy a 
baby out of fairy land would look, flitting round 
on her tiniest of feet, her yellow hair glinting 
goldenly in every chance sunbeam, and her wist- 
ful eyes blue as a blue flower. 

How could I help loving her ? Ay, how could 

I ? 

I fancy I must have loved her a little, even 
then, only I had grown so in the habit of regard- 
ing her as an interloper, a rival, an alien, who 
was taking from me all which had formerly been 
mine, that I never owned, even in the silence of 
my own heart, to any softening toward her. 

Father and mother were good to me beyond 


MY LOST SISTER: A CONFESSION. 121 


my deserts, and beyond my poor words to de- 
scribe. I have known, since, with what infinite 
love and grief they sorrowed over me, while 
waiting for this evil growth in my heart to be 
uprooted, as they felt sure it would be, some time. 
They had the wisdom to know that reproof 
would be vain, and simply to love me and be 
silent. 

But if they loved me , and were to me most 
patient and kind, they were devoted to little 
Lily, as was natural. She was so frail and so 
fair, so needed their constant watchfulness, that 
it is not strange she had it. 

One day, when she was two years old and I was 
twelve, I sat in a corner of the sitting-room, 
putting a dissected map together, while a lady 
was calling upon my mother. She looked ear- 
nestly and long at Lily ; but that was not un- 
common ; the child’s dainty beauty was a pleasant 
thing to watch. At last, after she had risen to 
go, she said, as if she couldn’t help saying it, 

“ Take good care of that little one, Mrs. Allen. 
She looks to me like one of the children the angels 


love.” 


122 


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I saw the quick dew suffuse my mother’s eyes, 
as she made some answer which I failed to hear, 
and then went to the door with her guest. 

Am I to tell all the sad and bitter truth ? I 
understood, as well as they did, that they thought 
our Lily so frail we should have hard work to 
make her flourish in the cold soil of the earth ; 
and for one moment a feeling of evil triumph 
swelled my heart. When she was gone, I should 
be all to my father and mother, as I used to be 
before she came. They would love me, when 
they had no one else to love. 

I felt a guilty flush mounting to my cheeks, 
and I swept my map into its box hastily, and 
got up to leave the room. As I went out of the 
door Lily’s voice followed me, sweetly shrill, — 
“ Nan ! Nan ! Nan ! ” and, for the very first 
time in my life, a conviction smote me that there 
would be a sense of loss when that voice could 
never follow me again, with its soft calling, 
through all the years. 

The next summer was a strange, warm, oppres- 
sive summer, — the summer of ’56. With its July 


MY LOST SISTER: A CONFESSION. 123 


heats our Lily began to droop. Such care as she 
had, such nursing, such love ! But she had been 
always like a blossom from heaven, sprung up by 
mistake in the rough soil of this world, and she 
needed for her healing the wind which blows for 
ever through the leaves of the tree of life. 

She soon grew so weak that she could not run 
about any more, but would lie all day, except when, 
for a change, my mother held her in her arms, in a 
little rose-curtained crib, out from which the blue, 
wistful eyes followed all our movements, with a 
sweet, loving, lingering look, which I cannot de- 
scribe. On me, in especial, that long gaze used to 
rest; and never could I leave the room without 
that sweet, small voice calling after me plaintively. 

There came a day, at last, when the doctor sat 
'half an hour by Lily’s side,- watching her with 
grave, silent face, and then went into another 
room alone with my mother. He came out first, 
and went away, and when she followed him, her 
eyes were very red. I knew afterwards, what I 
suspected the moment I saw her face, that he had 
been telling her that she must make up her mind 
to part with her little darling. 


124 


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My heart was not quite stone, after all, for it 
grew strangely soft and strangely afraid then. 
She was going home to God, this little Ldy of 
heaven ; and would she tell Him that I had hated, 
all through, the baby sister He had given me ? I 
went away by myself and prayed. I had said my 
prayers night and morning, all my life, but this 
was quite another thing, this cry of the child’s 
heart becoming conscious of its guilt and woe, to 
the pitying Father. 

At last, I went to my mother. Lily was asleep, 
and mamma sat by her side, pale as death, but with 
face that made no complaint. I knelt down beside 
her. f 

“ O mother ! ” I cried, “ I have been so wicked, 
— and now I cannot undo it! Oh, if I could! 
Oh, if I could only die, — I who am not fit to 
live, — and let you keep Lily!” 

She bent over me, and drew me into her arms, 
against her bosom. 

“If you are not fit to live, my darling, you are 
not fit to die,” she said gently. “ I can better part 
with Lily, for she is pure yet as when God gave 


MY LOST SISTER: A CONFESSION, 125 


her to me. I have seen your sin and your suffer- 
ing, and I have known your repentance would 
come.” 

“ Oh, it has, it has ! Mother, how can I bear it? 
Will she go home to God, and tell Him I have 
hated her?” 

“Do you think she could tell Him any thing 
which He does not know? But Lily has never 
found out what hate means. She has always loved 
you, and she does not know but that all the world 
loves her. The pain which your sin has caused has 
not rested on Lily, — thank God for that.” 

“ But I might have made her happier, — I might 
have been good to her, — and now, perhaps I shall 
never have any little sister any more in all the 
world.” 

Just then the child awoke, and put out her frail 
little hands, with a low, sweet call I was destined 
to listen for in vain through all the empty, after 
years. I ran to her, and took her in my arms. 
She saw the tears upon my face, and touched them 
with her mites of fingers. 

“ Naughty Nan,” she said, in fond reproach, 
“naughty Nan, to cry, — make Lily cry too.” 


126 


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And then I wiped away m;y tears, and tried to 
be cheerful ; but, oh, how heavy my heart was ! 
and, mourn as I would, I could not bring back the 
dead months and days wherein I might have loved 
my little sister, and had hated her instead. 

What else? 

Nothing, but that, with the fading summer 
flowers, she, too, faded and died. In her case was 
wrought no miracle of healing. “We all do fade 
as the leaf ; ” but she ha'd never been a strong, 
green leaf, tossed by summer winds, freshened by 
summer rains, gay in summer sunshine. Just a 
pale, sweet day-lily, that lived her little life, and 
died with the sunset. And the first words she 
ever spoke, were the last words, also. She opened 
her tender eyes after a long silence, during which 
she had scarcely seemed to breathe, and they rested 
on me. 

“ Nan ! Nan ! Nan ! ” she cried, as if it were a 
call to follow her into the strange, new life, the 
strange, new world, whither, a moment after, she 
was gone. 

If there has been any good in my life since then, 


MY LOST SISTER: A CONFESSION. 127 


if I have striven at all to be tender and gentle 
and unselfish, let me offer such struggles as a 
tribute to her memory, as one lays flowers upon an 
altar or a grave. Whither she has gone, I pray 
God to guide my feet also, in His own good time 
and way ; and I shall know that I have reached 
the place whither my longings tend, when I hear, 
soft falling through the eternal air, her low, sweet 
call, — 

“Nan! Nan! Nan! Welcome, Nan ! ” 


WHAT CAME TO OLIVE HAYGARTH. 


A CHRISTMAS STORY. 


TT was the afternoon of the 24th of December, 
a dull, gray afternoon, with a sky frowning 
over it which was all one cloud, but from which 
neither rain nor snow fell. A certain insinuating 
breath of cold was in the air, more penetrating 
than the crisp, keen wind of the sharpest January 
day. 

Olive Haygarth shivered as she walked along 
the bleakest side of Harrison Avenue, down town. 
She was making her way to Dock Square, to 
carry home to a clothing store some vests which 
she and her mother had just completed. 

After a while she turned and walked across into 
Washington Street, for an impulse came over her 
to see all the bright Christmas things in the shop 


WHAT CAME TO OLIVE II AY GARTH. 129 


windows, and the gay, glad people, getting ready 
to keep holiday. 

She had meant, when she set out on her walk, 
to avoid them, for she knew that her mood was 
bitter enough already. She had left no brightness 
behind her at home. There were but two of 
them, herself and her mother, and they were 
poor people, with only their needles between 
them and want. 

They had never known actual suffering, how- 
ever, for Mrs. Haygarth had worked in a tailor’s 
shop in her youth, and had taught Olive so much 
of the intricacies of the business as sufficed to 
make her a good workwoman. 

Accordingly they did their sewing so well as to 
command constant employment and fair prices. 
But after all it was ceaseless drudging, just to 
keep body and soul together. What was the use 
of it all ? Not enjoyment enough in any one 
day to pay for living, — why not as well lie down 
and die at once ? 

She walked on sullenly, thinking of these 
things. An elegant carriage stopped just in front 
9 


130 


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of her, and a girl no older than herself got out, 
trailing her rich silk across the sidewalk, and 
went into a fashionable jeweller's. 

Olive stopped, and looking in at the window, 
ostensibly at the vases and bronzes, watched the 
girl with her dainty, high-bred air. She noted 
every separate item of her loveliness, — the delicate 
coloring, the hair so tastefully arranged, the pure, 
regular features. Then she looked at the lustrous 
silk, the soft furs, the bonnet, which was a pink 
and white miracle of blonde and rosebuds. How 
much of the beauty was the girl’s very self, and 
how much did she owe to this splendid setting? 
Olive had seen cheeks and lips as bright and 
hair as shining when she tied on her own 
unbecoming dark straw bonnet before her own 
dingy looking-glass. 

She went on with renewed bitterness, asking 
herself, over and over again, Why? Why? 
Why? Did not the Bible say that God was no 
respecter of persons? But why did He make 
some, like that girl in there, to feed on the roses 
and lie in the lilies of life, — to wear silks, and 


WHAT CAME TO OLIVE HAYGARTH. 131 


furs, and jewels, and laces, and then make her to 
work buttonholes in Butler & Co.’s vests? Was 
there any God at all ? or, if there was, did He not 
make some people and forget them altogether, 
while He was heaping good things on others 
whom He liked better? She could* not under- 
stand it. And then to be told to love God after 
all ; and that He pitied her as a father pitied his 
children ! Why ! that girl in the silk dress could 
love God, easily, — that command must have been 
meant for her. 

Going on she caught a glimpse of an illumina- 
tion in the window of a print shop. 

“ Peace on Earth and Good-Will toward 
Men ” was the legend set forth by the brilliantly- 
colored letters. 

What a mockery those words seemed to be ! 
There had never been peace or good-will in their 
house, even m the old days when they were 
tolerably prosperous, before her father went away. 

She walked very slowly now, for she was 
thinking of that old time. She had loved her 
father rnorq, than she had ever loved any one else. 


132 


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To her he had always been kind ; he had never 
found fault with her, and had smoothed all the 
rough places out of her life. Her mother had 
been neat and smart and capable, as the New 
England phrase is. Higher praise than this Mrs. 
Haygarth did not covet. But like many capable 
women, she had acquired a habit of small fault- 
finding, a perpetual dropping, which would 
have worn even a stone, and George Haygarth 
was no stone. 

The woman loved her husband, doubtless, in 
some fashion of her own, but to save her life she 
could not have kept from “nagging” him. She 
fretted if he brought mud upon his shoes over 
her clean floor, if he spent money on any pleasure 
for himself, any extra indulgence for Olive ; above 
all, if he ever took a fancy to keep holiday. 

Just five years ago things had come to a climax. 
Olive was thirteen years old then, and he had 
brought her home for Christmas some orna- 
ments, — a pin and earrings, not very expensive, 
but in Mrs. Haygarth’s eyes useless and un- 
necessary. She assailed him bitterly, and for a 


WHAT CAME TO OLIVE IlAYGARTR. 133 


marvel he heard her out in dumb silence. When 
she was all through, he only said, — 

“ I think I can spare the eight dollars they cost 
me, since I am not likely to give the girl any 
thing again for some time. It will be too far to 
send Christmas gifts from Colorado.” 

Mrs. Haygarth’s temper was up, and she an- 
swered him with an evil sneer, — 

“ Colorado, indeed ! Colorado is peopled with 
wide-awake men. It’s no place for you out 
there.” 

He made no reply, only got up and went out ; 
and, going by Olive, he stooped and kissed her. 

How well she remembered that kiss ! 

Through the week afterward he went to his 
work as usual, but he spent scarcely any time at 
home, and when there made little talk. All his 
wife’s accustomed flings and innuendoes fell on 
his ears apparently unheeded. The night before 
New Year’s he was busy a long time in his own 
room. When he came out he handed Mrs. Hay- 
garth a folded paper. 

“ There,” he said, “ is the receipt for the next 


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year’s house rent, and before that time is out I 
shall send you the money, if I am prospered, to 
pay for another year. I have taken from the 
savings-bank enough to carry me to Colorado and 
keep me a little while after I get there ; and the 
bank book, with the rest of the five hundred 
dollars, I have transferred to you. If I have any 
luck you shall never want, — you and Olive. 
You’ll be better off without me. I think I’ve 
always been an aggravation to you, Martha, — only 
an aggravation.” 

He went back again into his room, and came out 
with a valise packed full. 

“ I think I’ll go away now, ” he said. “ The 
train starts in an hour, and there is no need of my 
troubling you any longer.” 

Then he had taken Olive into his arms, and she 
had felt some sudden kisses on her cheek, some hot 
tears on her face ; but he had said nothing to her, 
only the one sentence, gasped out like a groan, — 

“ Father’s little one! father’s little one ! ” 

Olive shivered and then grew hot again, as she re- 
membered it; and remembered how wistfully he 


WHAT CAME TO OLIVE HAY GARTH. 135 


had looked afterwards at his wife, reading no en- 
couragement in her sharp, contemptuous face. 

44 1 guess you’ll see Colorado about as much as I 
shall,” said Martha Haygarth, sneeringly. 44 Your 
courage may last fifty miles.” 

He did not answer. He just shut the door behind 
him and went out into the night, — and she had 
never seen him since, never heard his voice since 
that last cry, — 44 Father’s little one ! ” 

She felt the thick-coming tears blinding her eyes, 
but she brushed them resolutely away, and looked 
up at the Old South clock just before her. 

Almost five. The sun had set nearly half an hour 
ago, and the night was falling fast. How long 
a time she had spent in walking the short distance 
since she came into Washington Street ! How late 
home she should be ! She quickened her steps 
almost to a run, went to the clothing store, where 
she had to wait a little while for her work to be 
looked over and paid for, and heard the clocks 
strike six just as she reached the corner of Essex 
Street, on her homeward way. The dense, hurry- 
ing crowd jostled and pressed her, and she turned 


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the corner. She would find more room on the 
Avenue, she thought. 

She had not noticed that two young men were 
following her closely. They would have been, 
gentlemen if they had obeyed the laws of God and 
man. As it was, there was about them the look 
which nothing expresses so well as the word 
“ fast.” Their very features had become coarse 
and lowered in tone by the lives they led; 
and yet they were the descendants of men whose 
names were honored in the State, and made glorious 
by traditions of true Christian knighthood. 

On the other side of the way, alike unnoticed 
by Olive and her pursuers, a man walked on stead- 
ily, never losing sight of them for a moment. At 
last, as she came into a quiet portion of the street, 
the two young men drew near her. They were 
simply what I have said, “ fast. ” They perhaps 
meant no real harm, and thought it would be good 
fun to frighten her. 

44 4 Where are you going, my pretty maid? ’ ” said 
one, the bolder and handsomer of the two. 

“ 4 My face is my fortune, sir, she said,’ ” re- 


WHAT CAME TO OLIVE HAYGARTH. 137 


sponded the other, in a voice which the wine he 
had taken for dinner made a little thick and un- 
steady. 

“ You ought not to be out alone, ” the first began 
again. “You are quite too young and too pretty. ” 

“ That she is, ” a loud, stern voice answered, 
“ when there are such vile hounds as you ready to 
insult an unprotected girl.” 

Surely it was a voice Olive knew, only stronger 
and more resolute than she had ever heard it 
before. 

She turned suddenly, and the gas light struck 
full on her flushed, frightened, pretty face, which the 
drooping hair shaded. The man, who had crossed 
the street to come to her rescue, looked at her a mo- 
ment, and then, as if involuntarily, came to his lips 
the old, fond words, the last she had ever heard 
him speak, — 

“ Father’s little one ! ” 

He opened his arms, and she, poor tired girl 
crept into their shelter. The two young men stood 
bv waiting, enough of the nobility of the old blood 
in them to keep them from running away, though 


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tlieir nerves tingled with shame. George Hay- 
garth spoke to them with quiet, manly dignity. 

“ When I saw you following this girl I had no 
idea she was my girl, whom I had not seen for 
five years. It was enough for me that she was a 
woman. To my thinking it’s a poor manhood that 
insults women instead of protecting them. I 
meant to look out for her, and, be she who she 
might, you should not have harmed her. ” 

“We never meant her anjr real harm,” the elder 
of the two said humbly ; “ but we have learned 
our lesson, and I think we shall neither of us for- 
get it. Young lady, we beg your pardon.” 

Then they lifted their hats and went away ; 
and George Haygarth drew his daughter’s hand 
through his arm and walked on, telling his story 
as he walked. 

He had been unsuccessful at first. For more 
than eighteen months he had scarcely been able to 
keep himself alive. Fever had wasted him, plans 
had failed him, hope had deserted him. The very 
first money he could possibly spare he had sent 
home, with a long loving letter to the absent, over 


WHAT CAME TO OLIVE HAY GARTH 139 


whom his heart yearned. But money and letter had 
both come back to him after a while, from the 
dead-letter office. 

“ Yes, ” Olive said, “ we were too poor to keep 
on there after the year for which you paid was out, 
and we have moved two or three times since then. 
The postman did not know where to find us, 
and after the first year we gave up asking for 
letters at the office. ” 

Her father’s hand clasped hers tighter, in sym- 
pathy, and then he told the rest of his story. 

He had never been very prosperous, never seen 
any such golden chances as the mining legends 
picture, but he had come home better off than he 
ever should have been if he had stayed in the East. 

For a whole week he had been in Boston search- 
ing for them everywhere, and no knowing how 
much longer he might have had to wait but for 
this accident. 

“ Don’t say accident, father, ” Olive answered, 
softly. “ It was God’s way of bringing us together. 
I begin to see now what it means when the Bible 
says, ‘He is touched by our infirmities, and pities 


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our necessities.’ And yet, only this afternoon I 
was losing all my faith, and thinking that if He cared 
for all the rest of the world He had forgotten me. 
Here we are, — the next house is home.” 

44 Your mother — how will she receive me, 
Olive ? ” 

Olive’s heart seemed to stand still. Her mother 
had been so bitter through all these years ; had 
said such cruel things about this man, whom she 
accused of deserting his family and leaving them 
to starve, of caring only for himself. She did not 
speak, — she did not know what to say. 

44 You must go in and break it to her,” George 
Haygarth said, as they climbed the stairs of the 
humble tenement house, the third story of which 
the mother and daughter occupied. 44 1 will stay 
outside and wait. It won’t be coming home at all 
if Martha doesn’t bid me welcome.’ 1 ' 

Olive went in, trembling. 

44 Here is the money, mother.” 

Mrs. Haygarth reached out her hand for it and 
looked at it. 

44 Yes, it’s all right; but I thought you were 
never coming home. What kept you ? ” 


WHAT CAME TO OLIVE II AY GARTH. 141 


“ I looked into the windows a good deal as I 
went down, and then I had to wait at the store, 
and I’ve been thinking, mother. It will be five 
years next week since father went away. What 
if we could see him again ? ” 

She paused, expecting to hear some of the old 
bitter words about her father; but, instead, her 
mother’s voice fell softly upon her ear. 

“ Tve been thinking too, Olive, and I believe he 
is dead. I don’t think I used to be patient enough 
with him, and perhaps I wore his love out. But 
he did care for you , and seems to me nothing short 
of death could have kept him away so long.” 

“ But if you could see him, mother?” Olive per- 
sisted, with trembling voice. 

Some new thought pierced Martha Haygarth’s 
brain. A strange thrill shook her. She looked an 
instant into Olive’s eyes. Then, without a word, 
she sprang to the door and threw it open. Olive 
heard a low, passionate cry. 

“ George ! George ! if I was cross I did love 
you ! ” and Olive saw a figure come out of the 
shadow and take her mother close in its arms. And 


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112 


then she hid her eyes, and said a little prayer, she 
never knew what. 

So, after all, God had not forgotten them. Just 
when their want was sorest their help had come. 
And they needed all they had suffered, perhaps, to 
teach her mother what love was worth, and what 
forbearance signified. 

“ Peace on Earth and Good-Will toward 
Men!” 

From the very sky the words seemed to drop 
down to her, like an angelic blessing ; and now to 
their home the reign of peace had come, and she 
understood what the benediction meant. 












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UNCLE JACK. — Page 143 





UNCLE JACK. 


“W HAT young bears most boys are ! ” said 
my Uncle Jack, watching his oldest hope 
pushing his sister in the swing so vigorously that 
she almost fell out, and then pulling one side of the 
rope at a time, making her fairly dizzy with sway- 
ing from side to side while she alternately screamed 
and entreated. 

“ Just about the same, all of them,” Uncle Jack 
went on. “Talk about boyish chivalry, I never 
found it, especially toward a boy’s own kith and 
kin. There may be some Highland Marys with 
juvenile adorers, but nine times out of ten a boy 
would rather frighten a girl than kiss her. My 
John here’s just a specimen. Come here, sir,” 
raising his voice. “ Do you want to hear a story 
about the days when I was just such another cub 
as yourself ? ” 


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This suggestion brought John and his sister both 
in from the swing. When Uncle Jack began to 
“ spin a yarn,” as he often called it, all the family 
were sure to want to be present at its unravelling. 

“ You see,” he began, “ my sister Nelly wasn’t 
my sister at all ; but it was all the same, as far as 
my feeling for her went. When I was only three 
years old my mother’s best friend died, and left 
Nelly, a little, wailing, two-months-old baby, to my 
mother’s care. Her father had been killed before 
she was born, in a railroad accident, so there was 
no one but my mother to see to her ; and she 
brought the little thing home and adopted, her, 
thankfully enough, for though she had four good 
stout boys, of whom I was the youngest, there was 
never a girl in the family till Nelly came. 

“We all loved her, as she grew older. She was 
a pretty little blossom as you would want to see, 
with her black eyes, and the crisp, black hair fall- 
ing about her rosy cheeks. She had a funny little 
rose-bud of a mouth, too, and the daintiest little 
figure, — well-made all through, and no mistake 
about it. 

“ I think I loved her, if any thing, better than 


UNCLE JACK. 


145 


the rest did, considering that she was nearer my 
age, and so we were more continually together, 
but, bless you, there wasn’t any chivalry in it. It 
didn’t keep me from painting her doll’s face black, 
or hiding its shoes, or from listening when she was 
talking with her girl cronies, and then bursting out 
among them, and yelling their choicest secret to 
the four winds. 

“ I would have knocked any boy down, from the 
time I was big enough to use my fists, who had 
said a saucy word to Nelly ; but I said plenty of 
them myself. I believe I liked to tease her for 
the sake of hearing her beg me not to ; just as I’ve 
seen you tease your sister a hundred times, Master 
John. 

“ You would think she would have hated me : 
but that’s one curious thing about girls and women ; 
they don’t always hate where you would naturally 
expect them to ; and Nelly cared a good deal more 
about me than I deserved. She seemed to be proud 
of me, because I was a great, strong, roystering fel- 
low, and she never bore malice for any of the tricks 
I served her. 


10 


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“ I have wondered many a' time since how I could 
have had the heart to torment her, for she never 
once tried to revenge herself on me, nor can I rec- 
ollect her ever being angry with me. When I got 
myself into disgrace with parents or teachers, it 
was always her gentle voice which pleaded for me, 
and hard enough folks found it to say no to her, 
whether it was the dark eyes and bright cheeks, 
or a little winning, coaxing way she had. 

“ When I was fourteen and Nelly was eleven we 
went one day to a huckleberry picnic. We had 
great fun all the afternoon, and stayed a good deal 
later than we meant to, so that it was almost dark 
when we started to go home.' We had two miles 
to walk, and the first half of the distance our way 
lay with the rest of the company. I had got well 
stirred up by the general merriment, and wasn’t 
half satisfied with the frolic ending there. 

“ Nelly, I remembered afterwards, was very 
quiet, and seemed tired. She was a delicate little 
thing, any way, and got worn out with fatigue or 
excitement a good deal sooner than most of her 
mates. Finally our road turned off away from the 


UNCLE JACK. 


147 


rest, and led through a long pine wood. As we 
went on under the thick trees it grew darker and 
darker, and Nelly cuddled up closer to my side. 

“ You’d have thought that at fourteen I was old 
enough for chivalry, and that sort of thing, if I was 
ever going to be ; but not a bit of it, — I was just a 
great, strong, rollicking boy, with some heart, to 
be sure, but liking fun better than any thing, and 
headstrong and inconsiderate to an extent which I 
am ashamed to remember. Full still of unex- 
hausted animal spirits, and, as I said, not half satis- 
fied with the frolic I had had, I began, in default 
of other amusement, to tease Nelly. 

“ I told her a ghastly story or two, and then I 
would rush away from her among the thick trees, 
as if in pursuit of something, and come back again 
to her side, in a few minutes. I wanted her to 
scream after me, but she didn’t. She was so still 
that I actually thought she didn’t care ; and after 
a while I grew vexed because I couldn’t vex her, 
and make her implore me to stay with her, and 
confess her dependence upon me. 

“ At last, when we were about a third of a mile 


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from home, a path led through the woods, branch- 
ing off from the main path on which we were, to 
the farm where my greatest crony lived. I thought 
of something I wanted to say to him. Here was a 
chance, to tease Nelly well, — let her see whether 
she was just as comfortable without me as with me. 

“ You look at me as if you didn’t believe I could 
have been such a brute ; but I was, and what is 
more, I did not at all realize at the time that I was 
doing any harm. That Nelly would have a little 
scare, and hurry home somewhat faster than usual, 
was the most I apprehended; so I said, with* a sort 
of boyish swagger, — 

“ 4 It just occurs to me that there is something I 
want to say to Hal Somers, and we are so near 
home now that you won’t be afraid, so I’ll just 
branch off there. Tell mother I had supper enough 
at the picnic, and she needn’t wait for me.’ 

“ It was too dark to look at Nelly, or perhaps 
her white face, sad and frightened as I know it 
must have been, would have turned me from my 
purpose. She did not speak one word, and I struck 
off at a tearing pace through the woods. 


UNCLE JACK. 


149 


44 By the time I had reached Hal Somers’s place, 
I began to get sobered down a little, and to feel 
somewhat uncomfortable about what I had done. 
I had to wait a few minutes before I could see him, 
but I did my errand briefly, and it was not more 
than an hour after I had left Nelly before I myself 
was at home. I found mother in the porch, look- 
ing out anxiously. 

44 ‘ I’m so glad you’ve come, children,’ she cried, 
when she heard my footsteps, and then, as I drew 
nearer, 4 Why, Jack, where is Nelly ? ’ ” 

44 4 Here, I suppose,’ I answered, trying to face 
the music boldly. 4 1 left her about an hour ago 
in the woods, where the path branches oft to go to 
Hal Somers’s, and she* had nothing to do but to 
come straight home.’ 

44 4 You left Nelly in the woods, an hour ago ! ’ 
my mother cried, in a tone which made my heart 
stand still, and then turn over with a great leap.. 
And then she sprang by me like some wild crea- 
ture, and called through the darkness to my father 
to come with his lantern, quick, quick, for Nelly 
had been alone in the dark woods for an hour. 


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44 Instantly, as it seemed to me, my father and 
my oldest brother were followiijg mother along the 
woodland path, and I stole after them, feeling like 
a second Cain. It was but a very few minutes 
before we came up to Nelly, for there she was, just 
where I left her. She had sunk to the ground, and 
was half sitting there, her back leaning against a 
tree beside the path. The light from the lantern 
flashed on her face, a face white and set as death, 
but with the wide-open eyes glaring fearfully into 
the dark beyond. 

44 It was my mother who touched her first ; and 
felt to see whether her heart had stopped beating. 

44 4 Is she dead ? ’ my father asked huskily. 

44 4 1 don’t know. It seems to me I can feel the 
very faintest throb, but I cannot tell until we get 
her home. If she isn’t dead, I am afraid she is 
worse, — frightened out of her senses, for ever.’ 

44 Then father and William made preparations to 
carry her. I asked, timidly, if I could help. I 
think none of them had noticed before that I was 
there. 

44 4 You ! ’ my father said, with such concentrated 


UNCLE JACK. 


151 


scorn and wrath in his voice as I cannot describe ; 
and then mother said, more mildly, but so sadly it 
was worse than any anger, — 

‘“No, I trusted her to you once. I supposed 
you loved her.’ 

“ So I saw them move off, carrying her between 
them, and I followed after like an outcast, until it 
occurred to me that, at least, I could call a physi- 
cian. So I flew by them like the wind, and off on 
the road to town. By some singular good fortune, 
if we ought not always to say Providence and never 
fortune, before I had gone forty rods I met Dr. 
Greene, who was coming in our direction to visit a 
patient. So I had him with me on the door-stone 
when they brought Nelly in. 

“ I did not dare to go into the room where they 
carried her ; hut I waited outside in an agony which 
punished me already for my sin. At last my 
mother had pity on me and looked out. 

“ ‘ She is not dead, Jack,’ she said, ‘ but she is 
still insensible, and until she is restored to con- 
sciousness there is no telling what the result will 
be.’ 


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“ Then an awful terror came over me, which I 
cannot put into words. What if she died, or what 
if she never had her reason again? Who in that 
house would ever bear to look at me ? When Cain 
had murdered his brother he had to go forth alone, 
— what was left for me, another Cain, but to go 
also alone into the world ? 

“ We lived nine miles away from a seaport town 
from which whaling vessels were continually start- 
ing, and it came info my mind that I might ship on 
board one for a three years’ cruise ; and, by the 
time it was over, the folks at home might have 
learned to forgive me for being in the world. So 
off through the night I hurried. 

“ How strangely our ways seem made ready for 
us, often, in the great moments, big with fate, of 
our lives ! I found a whaler which was to sail in 
the early morning, a captain disappointed in one of 
his green hands, whose place I could have, and 
before I had been half an hour in the town my 
bargain was made, I had been fitted out with nec- 
essaries, and I went into a tavern to write a note 
to my mother. 


UNCLE JACK. 


153 


“ A strange, incoherent note it was ; but it told 
her where I was gone and why, and begged her, 
whatever came, to forgive her boy, who loved her, 
arid who might never see her again. 

“ Never mind about the long, long days, and 
weeks, and months which followed, — the empty 
hours of solemn nights and gusty days, during 
which I was face to -face with my own soul. 

“ Of course before a week had gone by I was 
sorry enough for the rash step I had taken. It 
seemed to me I could not live for three years and 
not know what had become of Nelly. I would 
have gone barefoot to the ends of the earth to find 
out about her, but I could not walk the sea. I 
was growing so wild with grief and anxiety that I 
sometimes think I should have walked overboard 
some night, and so ended all my pain for this world, 
if Providence had not raised me up a friend in my 
need — only a common sailor, and a man whose 
strange history I never knew, but a gentleman 
and a scholar, in whose locker were Milton, and 
Shakespeare, and Don Quixote. 

“ I had studied pretty well at school ; and was 


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rather forward than otherwise, for a boy of four- 
teen ; and I have sometimes thought no course of 
study in any school would have been so much to 
me as was the entire absence of frivolous and worth- 
less literature, and the constant companionship 
of these great minds. Besides these, I read daily 
in my pocket Testament ; and I owed a great deal 
also to the instructions and explanations of the 
friend who was, as it has always seemed to me, 
God’s especial gift to my needs. 

“ Our voyage appeared destined, at first, to be a 
highly successful one ; but just as we were nearly 
ready to return, we encountered a storm which, 
strewed the sea with wrecks. We saw our vessel 
go down, but we were fortunate enough to escape 
in our boats ; my friend and I, and two or three 
more, were with the second mate in his boat, and 
we were soon separated from the others. We made 
land on a fruitful island, peopled by savages who 
were not unfriendly; but it was many months 
before, at last, we got away in an East Indiaman, 
and while we were on the island my friend had 
died suddenly, leaving untold the story of his life. 


UNCLE JACK. 


155 


“ I will not enter into tlie particulars of my 
return home, — how from port to port and .ship 
to ship I made my way, until, at length, after five 
years of absence, I sighted the well-known land- 
marks of the old town from whence I embarked. 

“ How familiar it all looked to me ! I knew 
every field through which the homeward road 
led, and I walked the nine miles between the 
town and my father’s farm in the night, as I had 
done before. It was three o’clock of a Septem- 
ber morning when I reached the old place, and 
I had nearly two hours to wait before there were 
any signs of life about it. For now, after all 
these years, I had not the courage to summon 
them from their rest. How I passed those wait- 
ing hours, divided betwixt hope and fear, you 
can guess. I lived over in them* all the tortur- 
ing anxieties of the last five years. Was Nelly 
dead or alive? Should I ever see my mother 
again? What had changed, while the old house 
among the trees had stood so still? 

« At last I heard a sound. A door opened, 
and my mother, who of old always used to be 


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the first to move, looked out. Her hair was 
white, and her thin cheeks were pale ; but I 
knew the kind eyes that looked forth to meet the 
morning, and should have known them despite 
any amount of change. I sprang foward to 
greet her. 

44 1 Mother,’ I said. She knew my voice and 
turned toward me trembling. 

44 4 O Jack, Jack! I thought you were dead 
long ago. O my boy, my own boy ! ’ 

“And her arms were round my neck, her ten- 
der lips were kissing me ; and so she drew me 
in, into peace, shelter, home. 

“ 4 And Nelly ? ’ I asked, half afraid to call the 
name. 

444 Nelly is well. Oh, if you had but waited to 
see. She was ill for awhile, but no serious harm 
came to her ; and, instead, it was my own boy 
who went away to break my heart.’ 

44 4 And has come back to heal it,’ I cried, grow- 
ing bold and merry with my relief and joy. 

44 By this time the rest heard us, and came 
to the scene, — father, brothers, and last of all, 


UNCLE JACK. 


157 


Nelly; such a beautiful Nelly of sweet sixteen, 
ten times fairer and brighter than my brightest 
memories of her, and all ready to forgive me, 
and make much of me. 

“ Then was when the chivalry began. Then 
I was ready enough to fetch and carry for Miss 
Nelly of the dark eyes and the bright cheeks.” 

44 Oh,” said John, laughing, “ then when a fel- 
low is nineteen he can be chivalrous to his own 
sister? ” 

“ Very likely he can,” Uncle Jack answered, 
“ but my experience doesn’t prove it ; for I be- 
gan to be glad, very soon indeed, that Nelly was 
only my adopted sister, after all. It was a good 
while before I got my courage up to ask her 
whether she would trust herself to me on the 
long home stretch through life. Be sure that I 
promised her, if she would, that I’d never leave 
her in any dark pfaces.” 

“ And what did she say ? ” 

« Oh ! I mustn’t tell her secrets._ Go and ask 
her. There she comes, with her first grandchild 
in her arms. Her cheeks are not bright now, she 


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says, but somehow they look to me just as they 
used to look; and I know her eyes are as dark 
and deep as ever ; and though I call her ‘ mother,’ 
with the rest of you, when 3m u are all round, 
there is never a night that I don’t say to her, 
before she goes to sleep, ‘ God bless you, Nelly ! ’ ” 


NOBODY’S CHILD. 


'"pHE summer sun was warm in the five-acre 
lot, and the east porch was cool and 
pleasant, so the owner of the lot lingered in the 
porch and talked awhile with his wife. He had 
married her only the April before, and to live 
with her and love her had not yet grown to be an 
old story. It would be her fault if it ever did 
grow to be one ; for he was a tender, kindly man, 
this Marcus Grant, with a gentle and clinging 
nature, and a womanly need of loving. 

His wife, though she was young and pretty, 
with bright eyes, and bright lips, and soft, wav- 
ing hair, was harder than he, and colder, and 
more selfish. But she had given him all the 
heart she had, and in these early days she cared 
very much indeed about pleasing him, and keep- 
ing him satisfied with her ; or, rather, making 


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him continue to admire her, for quiet satisfaction 
on his part would not have been enough. 

He had thrown himself down on the door-stone, 
and his head was leaning against her lap, as she 
sat on her low chair in the porch, and ran her 
fingers in and out of his thick chestnut hair, 
thinking to herself what a fortunate woman she 
was to be the wife of this manly, handsome fel- 
low, whom so many girls wanted, and the mis- 
tress of his well-filled, comfortable house. 

From this east porch where they sat they 
could see down the long line of dusty road that 
led to the church and the few houses clustered 
round it, which passed for a village. The farm- 
house stood on the top of a high hill ; and up 
this hill they now saw a woman toiling slowly. 
The summer sun burned fiercely down on her, 
the dust rose with every step in a choking cloud 
about her, but still she struggled on. 

Little events are full of interest in country sol- 
itudes, and both Grant and his wife watched the 
wanderer with curiosity. 

“ Well, I never saw her before, that’s certain,” 


NOBODY’S CUILD. 


161 


the husband said, after a long look as she drew 
nearer. 

“ Nor I,” returned his wife. “ But see, Mark, 
she has a baby in her arms. She’s trying to 
keep the sun off it with that shawl; and, sure 
as you live, she is turning in here.” 

“ Why, so she is ; ” and Grant rose to his feet. 

“ May I sit down in the shade and rest ? ” 
asked the stranger, drawing nigh. She spoke in 
a clear, silvery voice, which betrayed some of her 
secrets, since it was the voice of a lady, and also 
it was the utterance of despair, for its hopeless 
monotone was unvarying. 

“ Certainly,” and Mrs. Grant rose and offered 
her own low chair, for clearly this was no com- 
mon tramp. 

“ And might I trouble you for a glass of wa- 
ter?” 

“ I’ll go for some fresh,” Grant said, full of 
hospitable intent. 

But before he got back with the water he heard 
his wife calling him, and hurrying forward at 
the sound, he found her holding the strangers 

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head, on her shoulder, and the baby, \yho was 
just opening sleepy eyes, in her arms. 

“ Quick, Mark, do something. I think she is 
dj'ing. She must be sun-struck.” 

And so it proved. No one ever knew how far 
she had toiled in that intense heat, with the baby 
in her arms, — no one ever knew any thing more 
about her, for when the sun set, which had 
scorched and withered her life, she, too, was 
gone to unknown shores. She spoke only once 
after she asked for the glass of water, and that 
was just before she died. The baby, in another 
room, uttered a cry, and she tried to turn her 
head toward the sound. 

“It is your baby,” Mrs. Grant said, kindly, 
“ but she is all right. What do you call her ? ” 

The strangest change came over the dying 
face : it may have been only a foreshadowing of 
death, but it seemed more like a mortal agony 
of renunciation and of despair. 

“ Nothing,” she said, as evenly and with as 
little change of inflection as if she were already 
a ghost ; “ nothing : she is nobody’s child.” 


NOBODY’S CHILD. 


163 


But in half an hour after that she was dead, 
and Mrs. Grant, who was very literal in her 
ideas, always thought that the stranger had not 
known what she said ; but, she used to add, the 
child was nobody’s child, for all they should 
ever know about it. 

After the mother was buried, she began to 
think it was time to dispose of this child, which 
was nobody’s. She was not without heart, and 
she had worked diligently to fashion small gar- 
ments enough to make the little creature com- 
fortable; but now, she thought, her duty was 
done, and she wondered Mark said nothing about 
taking the baby to the alms-house. 

At last, one evening, she herself proposed it. 
Her husband looked at her in mild surprise. He 
supposed all women loved babies by instinct, 
and he took it for granted that of course his 
wife wanted this one, only she probably thought 
he wouldn't like it round. 

“ Why, did you think I wouldn’t let you keep 
it?” he asked quietly. “I think God has sent 
it to us, and we’ve really no right to turn it over 


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to any one else, to say nothing of the pleasure it 
is to have the little bundle.” 

As I said, Mrs. Grant was still in a state of 
mind not to be satisfied without her husband’s 
admiration. She would not have fallen short of 
his ideal of her for any thing ; she would, at 
least, seem all that he desired her to be. She 
was quick enough to understand that he would 
think less of her if he saw her unwilling to keep 
the baby, so she smiled on him with what cheer- 
fulness she could summon, and treated the mat- 
ter as settled. 

Thus the child, which was nobody’s, grew up 
in the Grant household. She had been six 
months old, apparently, when she came there, 
and by midwinter she. began to totter round on 
her little feet, and to say short words. 

But no one ever taught her to say papa or 
mamma, those lovely first words of childhood. 
What had nobody’s child to do with such names ? 

It might have seemed strange to most people 
that Julia Grant did not love this little thin£, so 
thrown upon her mercy in its tender babyhood. 


NOBODY'S CHILD. 


165 


But, despite theories, all women are not fond of 
children. Every woman is, perhaps, fond, in a 
blind, instinctive way, of her own ; but the more 
heavenly love which takes all children in its 
arms and blesses them is not by any means 
universal. 

The most powerful trait in Mrs. Grant’s char- 
acter was a silent, unobtrusive selfishness. The 
whole world revolved, to her thought, about her . 
Rains fell, dews dropped earthward, winds blew 
and suns shone for Julia Grant. She had con- 
sented with secret reluctance to keep the child, 
and from that moment a root of bitterness and 
jealousy had sprung up in her heart. If her 
husband had thought much of her comfort, she 
used to say to herself, he would not have wanted 
to put all this care upon her. 

She was quite ready, therefore, to be jealous, 
and to feel as if something was taken from her 
every time he tossed the little one in his arms, 
or called it a pet name ; and after a while — not at 
once, for he was naturally the most unsuspi- 
cious of men — some instinct revealed this to 


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him, and made him, lover of peace as he was, 
very chary of manifesting in his wife’s presence 
any especial tenderness for the little stranger 
within his gates. 

But summer and winter came and went, and 
with their sun and shade nobody’s child grew on 
toward girlhood. She had a great deal of beau- 
ty, of a shadowy, delicate kind. She was sel- 
dom ill, but she was a very frail-looking child. 
The quick, changeful color in her cheeks, the 
depth of feeling in her dark eyes, the tremulous 
curves about her mouth, all indicated an organ- 
ization of extreme sensitiveness ; a nature to 
which love would be as the very breath of life, 
but which was too shrinking and timid ever to put 
forth any claims for it, or make any advances. 

For ten years she was' the only little one in 
the Grant household. Their affairs prospered, 
they grew richer every year, as if nobody’s child 
had brought a blessing with her; but it was a 
constant source of bitterness to Mrs. Grant that 
they were laying up for strangers, or perhaps 
for this waif, whom no one else claimed, and 


NOBODY’S CIIILD. 


167 


who seemed likely to remain in their house for 
ever, like some noiseless, unwelcome shadow. 

But at last, when the child had been for ten 
years her unwelcome housemate, to Mrs. Grant 
herself was given a little baby girl, God’s mes- 
senger of love, as I think every child must be, to 
every mother. Never had baby a warmer wel- 
come. The preparations made for her were 
worthy of a little queen, and she opened her eyes 
on a world of love and of summer. 

But perhaps no one, not even her mother, - 
lavished upon her such a passion of devotion as 
the poor little waif, nobody’s child, who had 
never in her life before had any one whom she 
dared to caress. Perhaps her devotion to baby 
touched Mrs. Grant’s heart ; at any rate she saw 
that she could trust the little one to her without 
fear, and so nobody’s child became a self-consti- 
tuted but most faithful nurse and body-guard to 
this other child, whom loving hearts were so 
proud and glad to own. 

And little Rose — for so they named the sum- 
mer baby — clung to her young nurse with a fond 


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tenacity, very exacting and wearing, indeed, 

• / 

but unutterably sweet to the shy girl whom no 
one else loved. She began to feel that she was 
of some. use, — even she had her own name and 
place in the world ; and this reminds me that I 
have not yet told you her name. She had been 
christened Annette soon after she came under 
the Grant roof, but little Rose called her “ Nan- 
ty,” and this odd title was the very first word 
that small person ever spoke. She was a lovely 
baby, one of the rosy, fat, dimpled, laughing 
kind, and so thoroughly healthy that she seldom 
cried, except when “ Nanty ” disappeared for a 
moment from her sight. The touch of her baby 
fingers seemed to make Marcus Grant and his 
wife both young again. Day by day some line 
of care faded out of their faces, which time had 
begun to harden. The mother smiled, as she had 
never smiled before, on her baby ; and here, at 
last, was an object on which the father’s great, 
loving heart could lavish itself, unblamed, and 
unquestioned. 

Rose was a year and a half old, when one cold 


NOBODTS CHILD. 


169 


winter night her father and mother were per- 
suaded to go to a house warming, a mile away. 
Mrs. Grant was seldom willing to leave her baby, 
but this gay company was to assemble at the 
new house of one of her best friends, and she 
took a fancy to be present. 

“ ‘ Nanty ’ will be just as careful of Hose, to do 
her justice, as I should,” she said; “and I think 
it’s only neighborly to go.” 

Her husband, always sociable in his nature, 
assented readily enough ; and eight o’clock saw 
them well tucked in under the buffalo robes of 
their sleigh, and started for the scene of festivi- 
ties. 

“ Nanty,” for her part, was well content. Rose 
was already asleep, her little cheek, pink as the 
heart of one of her namesake flowers, resting on 
one dimpled hand, while the other was tossed 
above her head, as we have all seen babies sleep. 
The maid-of-all-work went off early to her bed 
in the next chamber, and the man, who had a 
family of his own not far away, took his depar- 
ture, and then “ Nanty ” raked up the fire, and 
crept softly into bed beside little Rose. 


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It was nearly midnight when she woke, roused 
from her slumber by a light, a vivid, red light, 
brighter than day. In one moment she realized 
her position. The house was on fire, and the 
flames were already far advanced. 

She sprang to the door and opened it, but it 
was only to be met and driven back by a sheet 
of fire. There was no hope of escape that way. 
Eose was her only thought. If she could save 
the child, she did not care for herself. 

She opened the chamber window. The leap 
seemed desperate to her timid gaze, but the 
snow underneath the window might break the 
fall. Then she thought of something better. 
She caught the blankets from the bed, and rolled 
Eose in them hurriedly, then dragged off the 
feather-bed, by an effort of uttermost strength, 
and forced it through the window; and then, 
reaching out as far as she could, she dropped 
Eose, closely wrapped in the blankets, upon the 
bed, and sprang herself from another window, 
lest she might fall upon the child. 

For her there was no bed underneath, and no 


NOBODTS CHILD. 


171 


wrapping of soft woollens. Heavily she fell to 
the ground, and a violent shock, followed by 
deadly pain, told her that she had broken her 
arm. She thanked God, in that breathless mo- 
ment, that it was not her leg, for somehow she 
must move Rose to a place of safety, out of 
reach, at least, of falling timbers. How she did 
it she never could have told, but in thirty sec- 
onds Rose and the bed were out of the yard and 
across the street, and then she sank down be- 
side her charge, utterly unconscious. 

Mr. and Mrs. Grant were driving home after 
the festival when they caught the gleam of a 
wild, strange light in the direction of their own 
home. 

“ The house is on fire ! ” Mrs. Grant cried, with 
white lips. 

“ Rose ! ” the father answered hoarsely, and 
whipped his horse into a run. A quarter of a 
mile away from home they met the maid. 

“ Master, mistress,” she screamed after them, 
“ the house is on fire, and I’m going for help.” 

They did not stop for questions. Had “ Nanty ” 
also forsaken little Rose ? 


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But they found “ Nanty ” at her post, though 
at first they thought she was dead. The mother 
pulled aAvay the blankets from the little bundle 
beside her, and Baby Rose rubbed her chubby 
hands into her sleepy eyes. 

“ Where is I ? ” she said, “ and what for you 
make morning so soon ? ” 

“O Mark, Mark! she’s all right,” the mother 
cried, in a passion of joy. “ ‘ Nanty ’ has saved 
her;” and then she bent over the little girl in 
her thin night-gown, and took her by the 
arm. 

“ Nanty, Nanty ! ” 

She had seized the broken arm, and the pain 
roused the fainting girl. 

“ Yes’m,” she said, starting up. “I’m so sorry 
to be good for nothing just now, when you want 
me so much, but I broke my arm jumping 
out.” 

Afterwards, when the family had found a new 
shelter, the whole story came out. The maid, 
Judith, had read herself to sleep, and her candle 
had tipped over and set the bed on fire. The 


NOBODY’S CHILD. 


ITS 


flames had aroused her to a terror which utterly 
swept away whatever presence of mind she 
might have had under other circumstances, and 
without one thought for Rose or “ Nanty ” she 
had hurried off to call the neighbors to the 
scene of action. 

One might have feared that the fright and 
exposure would prove fatal to one so frail 
and delicate as “ Nanty ” had always been ; but 
by the time her arm was well healed she was 
stronger than ever before, drawing new life, as 
it seemed, from the love and care lavished on 
her so freely ; for now even Mrs. Grant’s heart 
had opened and taken her in. 

One day Marcus Grant said to his wife, — 

“But for ‘ Nanty ’ we should have had no child 
at all. It seems hard that she, who saved our 
darling, should be nobody’s child herself.” 

“You think we ought to adopt her, and make 
her ours legally ? ” his wife answered, smiling 
cheerfully. “ I have been thinking the same 
thing myself. We will do it when you please, 


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for I believe God sent her to us, to be our own, 
just as much as ever He sent Rose.” 

So it came about, before another spring, that 
f4 Nanty ” was no longer nobody’s child. Father, 
mother, and little sister all belonged to her, and 
she had name and place in life, and a happy 
home where love smiled for ever. 


MY LITTLE GENTLEMAN. 


JpOR a year the great house rising on the sum- 
mit of Prospect Hill had been an object of 
interest and observation, and a chief subject for 
talk to the quiet country neighborhood surround- 
ing it. Hillsdale was an old town — a still, steady- 
going farming place — where the young men 
ploughed the unwilling fields, and coaxed re- 
luctant crops out of the hard-hearted New Eng- 
land soil, as fathers and grandfathers had done 
before them. But in all the generations since 
the town was settled, no one had ever thought 
of building on Prospect Hill. It had been used 
as pasture ground, until now, when a man from 
Boston had bought it, and had had a road made 
to its top, and a house built on its very brow. 

This house was a wonder of architectural 
beauty. 

“ With its battlements high in the hush of the air, 

And the turrets thereon.” 


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It was built of a kind of mixed stone ; so that 
its variegated coloring had an air of brightness 
and gayety very unusual. The farmers about 
were exercised in mind over the amount of ox- 
flesh and patience required to drag stone enough 
for the great building up the high hill ; but that 
did not trouble the architect, who gave his or- 
ders composedly, and went on with his business, 
quite unheeding comment. The house, itself, 
puzzled the neighbors, with its superb, arched 
dining-hall, its lovely, frescoed drawing-room, 
its wide passages, its little music-room, and its 
great library all lined with carven oak. Then, 
why there should be so many chambers, unless, 
indeed, Mr. Shaftsbury had a very large family. 

But it was when the furniture began to come 
in that wonder reached its height. Such plen- 
ishings had never been seen before in Hillsdale. 
The carpet on the drawing-room must have been 
woven in some loom of unheard-of size ; for it 
seemed to be all in one piece, with a medallion 
in the centre, a border round the edge, and all 
over its soft velvet — into which your feet sank 


MY LITTLE GENTLEMAN. 


177 


as into woodland moss — the daintiest flowers 
that ever grew. Marble statues gleamed in front 
of the great mirrors ; and pictures of lovely land- 
scapes, and radiant sunsets, and handsome men, 
and fair women, hung upon the walls. In the 
music-room were placed a grand piano, a harp 
and a guitar. The shelves which ran round the 
library on all sides, half way from floor to ceil- 
ing, were filled with substantially bound books ; 
and above them were busts of great men by 
whom immortal words had been written. It 
was a dream of beauty all through, — and when 
it was finished, and a troop of servants, men and 
women, came to make all things ready, expec- 
tation reached its height. 

A presidential progress could hardly have ex- 
cited more interest than did the arrival of a quiet, 
gentlemanly-looking man, dressed in gray, with 
iron-gray hair and beard, at the little railroad 
station, where a carriage had been sent down 
from Prospect Hill to meet him. This, of course, 
was Mr. Shaftsbury. He was accompanied, in 
spite of the many chambers, by a family of only 
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two, — a lady much younger than himself, dressed, 
with elegant simplicity, with a face full of all 
womanly sweetness, and a boy, about twelve or 
thirteen, apparent^, — a high-bred little fellow in 
his appearance, but somewhat pale and delicate, 
and in need of the bracing air of Prospect 
Hill. 

They drove home in the sunset, — this little fam- 
ily of three, — and looked for the first time on 
their new abode. Mr. Shaftsbury had selected 
the location, and bought the land, somewhat 
more than a year before ; and then had put the 
whole matter into the hands of a competent ar- 
chitect, while he took his family to Europe, so 
that the new residence had as entirely the charm 
of novelty for him as for the others. 

For a month after that he was to be seen busi- 
ly superintending matters about his place in 
the forenoon, while his wife and boy sauntered 
along, never far away from him, or driving with 
them in the pleasant May afternoons, — always 
these three only, and always together. 

The first of J une, the summer term of the dis- 


MY LITTLE GENTLEMAN. 


179 


trict school began. It was an intense surprise 
to the scholars to find, first of all in his place, 
young Shaftsbury, from the hill. “ Robert Shafts- 
bury, thirteen years old,” he replied to the teacher, 
who asked his name and age. He studied quietly 
till recess, and even then lingered in his seat, 
with evident shyness, though he watched the 
others with a look of interest on his face. They 
stood apart, and talked of him among them- 
selves, instead of rushing out at once to play, 
as was their wont. 

At last, after a good deal of wonderment and 
talk, one boy, bolder or more reckless than the 
rest, marched up to him. 

“ I say, Velvet Jacket, how came you here ? ” 
was his salutation. “ Seems to me you’re too 
much of a gentleman for our folks.” 

A slight flush warmed young Shaftsbury’s 
pale cheeks ; but he answered, with frankness 
as absolute as his courtesy was perfect : — 

“ I have been taught at home, up to now, but 
my father wants me to be with other boys of 
my own age ; and he . says a true gentleman be- 
longs everywhere.” 


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The boys all heard what he said ; and, in spite 
of their boyish rudeness, it inspired them with a 
certain respect. That was the beginning of the 
title which they gave him, among themselves, 
of “ little gentleman,” — only among themselves, 
at first ; though afterwards, when they grew 
more familiar with him, they used to address 
him by it, more often than by his name. 

If there had been a philosophical observer to 
take note of it, it would have been curious to 
watch how unconsciously the boys were influ- 
enced by my little gentleman, — how their man- 
ners grew more gentle, — how they avoided coarse 
or unclean or profane words in his presence, as 
if he had been a woman. He led his classes, ea- 
sily, in their studies. The teacher had never to 
reprove him for carelessness in his duties,' or for 
broken rules. His father had said, “ A true gen- 
tleman belongs everywhere ; ” and he was qui- 
etly proving it. 

The scholars liked him, — they could not help 
it, for his manner was as courteous as his nature 
was unselfish and kindly ; and yet in their feel- 

f 


MY LITTLE GENTLEMAN. 


181 


ing for him there was a little strain of envy, — a 
slight disposition to blame him for the luxury 
and elegance to which he was bom ; and, be- 
cause of his very courtesy, to underrate his cour- 
age and the real manliness of his character. 

But there was one in whose eyes he was, from 
first to last, a hero. Jamie Strong was yet more 
delicate than young Shaftsbury. He had some- 
thing the matter with one of his ankles, and 
could not join in the rough sports of the others. 
He was the only son of his mother, and she was 
a widow. Her husband and* her other three chil- 
dren had all died of typhoid fever, and been, one 
after another, carried out of the little, lonesome 
cottage at the foot of the hill, where the sun sel- 
dom came, and now Jamie was the last. 

He would never be strong enough to do hard 
work. Sowing, ploughing, mowing, harvesting, 
— he could never manage any of these; so for 
his weak limbs his quick brain must make up ; 
and Widow Strong had determined that he should 
be a scholar, — a minister, if it pleased the Lord 
to call him to that; if not a teacher. 


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So she quietly struggled on to keep him at 
school, and to earn money- to provide for future 
years of academy and college. She sewed, she 
washed, she picked berries, — she did any thing 
by which she could add a dollar to her hoard. 

Jamie understood and shared her ambition, 
and studied with mig!it and main. He was used 
to harshness and rudeness from stronger boys, 
and he had grown shy and shrunk into himself. 
To him the coming of my little gentleman was 
as grace from heaven. Here was one who 
never mocked at his feebleness, or his poverty, 
' — who was always kind, always friendly, and who 
did many a little thing to make him happy. 
Young Shaftsbury on his part was quick to 
perceive the tender and loyal admiration of the 
other; and there grew between them the tie 
of an interest which had never been put into 
words. 

It had been a damp and . strange summer, 
intensely warm, even in that hilly region. It had 
rained continually, but the rains, which kept the 
fields green and made vegetation so unusually 


MY LITTLE GENTLEMAN. 


183 


lush and ripe, had seemed scarcely to cool at all 
the fervid heat of the air. Wiseacres predicted 
much sickness. Indeed, several cases of slow 
fever were in the town already. 

One day my little gentleman looked about in 
vain for his friend Jamie, and finally asked for 
him anxiously, and found that the boy was ill 
of tj^phoid fever. At recess he heard the boys 
talking of it. 

“ lie’ll never get well, ” one said. “ His father 
died just that way, and his three brothers. You 
see it’s damp, down in that hollow, and the sun 
hardly ever touches the house. I heard Dr. Si- 
monds say it was ten to one against anybody 
who was sick there.” 

When school was over Robert Shaftsbury hur- 
ried home. He found his mother sitting, dressed 
all in white, in the music-room, playing a sym- 
phony on the piano, while his father .sat a little 
distance off, listening with half-closed eyes. He 
waited until the piece was over, and then he told 
his story and preferred his request. 

The doctor had said it was ten to one against 


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any one who was sick in that little damp house 
in the hollow; and he wanted Jamie brought up 
the hill to their own home. He watched the 
faces of his father and mother as -he spoke; and 
it seemed to him that a refusal was hovering 
upon their lips, and he said, earnestly, — 

“Don’t speak, just yet. Remember that he is 
his mother’s only son, as I am yours. If I lay 
sick where there was no hope for me, and some 
one else might, perhaps, save me by taking me 
in, would you think they ought to try it, or to 
let me die ? ” 

Mr. Shaftsbury looked into his wife’s eyes. 

“ Robert is right,” she said, with the sudden, 
sweet smile which always seemed to make the 
day brighter when it came to her lips. “ If the 
poor, boy can be helped by being brought here, 
we must bring him.” 

“ I will go and see,” Mr. Shaftsbury answered, 
at once. 

“ And I, too, papa/' said my little gentleman. 

“Not you, I think. I fear contagion for 
you.” 


MY LITTLE GENTLEMAN. 


185 


“ I think there is no danger for me, living on 
this bright hill-top, in these great, airy rooms, — 
but even if there were, I am sure you would 
let me go if you knew how much Jamie loves 
me.” 

“ Come, then,” his father said, quietly. He 
had been, all his son’s life, preaching to him 
of heroism and self-sacrifice and devotion. He 
dared not interfere with almost his first oppor- 
tunity for any real exercise of them. So the 
two went down the hill together. 

It chanced that they met Dr. Simonds coming 
away from the house, and proposed to him the 
question of the removal. It would . not do, the 
doctor declared at once, — the disease had made 
too much progress. To remove him now would 
be more dangerous than to leave him where he 
was. 

“ Then I must go and see him,” Robert said, 
resolutely. “ You know he has only his mother, 
and I must spend all the time I can spare from 
school with him.” 

“ But I will send an excellent nurse, my son. 


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Do you not see that I cannot have you expose 
yourself? ” 

“ Send the nurse, too, please, papa ; but do not 
keep me from going. He will not care for the 
nurse, and he does care very much for me. I do 
not believe in the danger, and I know how glad 
he will be to see me.” 

Mr. Shaftsbury hesitated. This boy was as 
the apple of his eye. Must he indeed begin so 
soon to look danger in the face, for the sake of 
others? But dared he withhold him, when the 
boy felt that honor and duty called? It ended 
by his walking in with him quietly. 

It was something to see how Jamie’s face 
brightened. He had been very dull and stupid 
all day, his mother said, and some of the time 
his mind had been wandering. But now a glad, 
eager light came into his eyes, and a smile 
curved his parched lips. He put out his hot 
hands. 

“ Oh ! is it you, my little gentleman ? ” he said : 
“ I had rather see you than any thing else in the 
world.” 


MY LITTLE GENTLEMAN. 


187 


“ Well, then, I will come every day as soon as 
I am through school,” Robert Shaftsbury an- 
swered. 

“ Do you know what you have done ? ” his 
father asked, when, at last, they stood outside the 
house together. 

“Yes, papa. I have promised that poor, sick, 
helpless little fellow all the comfort I can give 
him. I have promised to do by him as I should 
want him to do by me if I were Jamie Strong, 
and he was Robert Shaftsbury.” 

Mr. Shaftsbury was silenced. This, indeed, 
was the rule of living he had taught. Should 
he venture to interfere with its observance ? 

So my little gentleman had his way. He took 
every precaution which his mother’s anxiety 
suggested, such as going home to lunch before 
he went to the little cottage where the sick boy 
lay and longed for him. But he went regularly. 
And no matter how wild Jamie might be, his pres- 
ence would bring calmness. The dim eyes would 
kindle ; the poor, parched lips would smile ; and 
Mrs. Strong said the visit did Jamie more good 
-than his medicines. 


188 


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At school the boys looked upon my little gen- 
tleman with a sort of wondering reverence. They 
all knew of his daily visits to the fever-haunted 
place, which they themselves shunned, and they 
marvelled at his courage. This was the boy they 
had fancied to be lacking in manliness, because 
he was slight and fair, — because he was carefully 
dressed and tenderly nurtured ! They said noth- 
ing ; but in a hundred subtile ways they showed 
their changed estimate. 

The days went on, and with them Jamie 
Strong’s life went toward its end. The doom of 
his house had come upon him ; and love and 
prayers and watching were all, it seemed, of 
none avail. One night the fever reached its cri- 
sis, and the doctor, who watched him through 
it, knew that the end was near. Jamie knew it, 
also. When the morning dawned he whispered 
faintly to his mother, — 

“ I shall never see another morning ; but oh, if 
I can only live till night, and see my little gen- 
tleman ! ” 

* 

She proposed to send for him ; but that was 
not what the boy wished. 


MY LITTLE GENTLEMAN. 


189 


“ No,” he said, feebly, “ I want to see him com- 
ing in, at the old time, with some flowers in his 
hand, 4 and make a sunshine in a shady place.’ 
Somebody said that, mother, I forget who ; I 
forget every thing now ; but that’s what he 
does ; he makes a sunshine in this shady place.” 

A dozen times that day it seemed as if the 
breath coming so faintly must be his last; but 
he clung to life with a strange, silent tenacity. 
At last, just a few moments before it was time 
for the accustomed visit, he said, — 

“ Kiss me good-by, mother. I want to save 
the rest of my strength for him. 

She kissed him, with her bitter tears falling 
fast. He put up a hand so thin that you could 
almost see through it, and brushed the tears 
away. 

“ Don’t cry,” he said ; “ it hurts me. Life here 
was hard, and up above Christ says it will be 
all made easy.” 

Then he was silent, and presently Robert came 
with a great bunch of white lilies in his hand. 

“ The lilies of heaven,” murmured Jamie, in a 


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low, strange tone. Then into his eyes broke 
once more the light which never failed to re- 
spond to Robert’s coming, and a wan smile flut- 
tered over his lips, as a soul might flutter before 
it flies away. 

“I am going now,” he said. “ I waited to say 
good-by, my little gentleman: Do you think 
they are all gentlemen up there ? ” 

With this question his life went out, and voices 
we could not hear made answer. 

This was the beginning of Robert Shaftsbury’s 
career. No harm came to him through his pres- 
ence in the fever-tainted house, — but he had 
learned a lesson there. The one thing for which 
he has striven in life is to be a gentleman ; and 
his interpretation of that much-abused phrase 
he finds in the Book which tells us to do unto 
others as we would that they should do unto 
us. 







N 





































\ 



\ 


RUTHY’S COUNTRY. — Page 191. 



RUTHY’S COUNTRY. 


JT was such a strange, sad, old face to be on 
such a young, slight form, that you could not 
help looking at it again and again. Otherwise 
there was nothing remarkable about her. She 
was just a girl sweeping a crossing, in a bust- 
ling, dirty street, on a muddy, sloppy March 
day. 

She was thinly clothed, but not more so than 
others of her class ; and there was nothing in 
particular to make me notice her except this 
queer, expressive, melancholy, unyouthful coun- 
tenance. She wore a worsted hood which left 
the whole face visible. You could see the fore- 
head, broad and low, and lined with puzzled 
thinking ; the dusky, tumbled hair ; the wishful, 
pathetic mouth with its drooping corners; and 
the great, strange, olive-colored eyes, which looked 


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as if they had asked for something they could 
never find for such a weary while that now 
they would never ask again, — eyes dark with 
despair, and yet with a suggestion of something 
else in them which set you questioning. 

Patiently she swept on. Sometimes she had 
to spring aside from the rapid passage of cart or 
carriage, sometimes she made clean the way of 
some dainty foot passenger, who rewarded her 
with a penny ; but all the time the hopeless, un- 
childlike visage never betrayed the slightest 
gleam of interest. I was dabbling in art a little, 
just then ; and I stood in the window of a picture 
store and watched her, thinking that her strange, 
impassive face ought to fit, somewhere, in the 
illustrations I was making for a book of ballads, 
but not knowing quite how to use it. 

All at once, as I watched, I saw a singular 
change pass over her. She held her broom mo- 
tionless, her lips parted, a light as if at midnight 
the sun should rise, lighted the darkness of her 
eyes, her whole expression kindled with some- 
thing, — interest, surprise, expectation, — I hardly 


RUTHY’S COUNTRY. 


193 


knew what, hut something that transformed it 
as by a spell. I stepped to the door then, and 
followed her eyes up the street. 

It takes ten times as long to tell this as it was 
in happening. It all came in an instant, — the 
change in her face, my going out to look for its 
cause, and the sight which, following her eyes, I 
saw, — a carriage coming swiftly down street, 
an elegant open barouche, in which sat a lady 
dressed in furs and velvet, and a wonderfully 
beautiful, golden-liaired child. It was at the 
child that my little crossing-sweeper was look- 
ing, with a gaze which seemed to me to say, — 

“ So this, then, is childhood ? This is what we 
ought to be when we are young ; and how beau- 
tiful it is ! ” 

She looked so intently that she forgot she was 
standing in the way, until the coachman shouted 
out to her, while he tried with all his strength to 
pull up his horses. She had looked one mo- 
ment too long. Somehow the pole knocked her 
down, and the horses stepped over or on her, 
which I could not see ; but in another moment 
13 


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they were drawn up a rod farther on, the lady 
was getting out of her carriage, and I myself 
was in the heart of the crowd which gathered at 
once, as usual. 44 Her arm is broken,” one cried. 
44 She has fainted,” said another. 

44 Where is her home ; can any one tell ? ” 
asked the lady in the furs and the velvet, standing 
now beside her. 

A ragged little newsboy stepped from the 
ranks and pulled at some ghost of a cap. 44 Please, 
ma’am, I know,” he said. 44 It’s down here in 
Moonstone Court, with old Sally.” 

44 Hey for Sally, in our alley,” sang another 
little limb of evil, vexed that he had not been 
the one who knew the local habitation afore- 
said. 

Newsboy No. 1 was elevated to the coachman’s 
box, and was desired to show the way. The 
lady got into the carriage herself, and received 
the injured and swooning girl, whom there were 
strong arms enough to lift, — the golden-haired 
child looked on with the compassion of an angel 
in her angelic face, — newsboy No. 2 hung on 


RUT BY’ S COUNTRY. 


195 


behind dexterously, making sure that his offence 
would pass unnoticed in the general melee , and 
the carriage rolled away toward Moonstone Court. 
Presently the golden -haired child spoke. 

“ What if they haven’t any good place for her 
there, mamma ? ” 

Mrs. Brierly, for that was the lady’s name, 
bent forward and addressed newsboy No. 1, on 
the box. 

“ Is the old Sally you spoke of the girl’s 
mother ? ” 

“No, ma’am. She ain’t no relation to her. 
I’ve heard folks say, Ruthy’s father and mother 
died, and old Sally took her in to beg for her ; to 
be a sufferin’ orphin, you know ; and lately 
Ruthy won’t beg any more, and they say the old 
un do beat her awful.” 

“ O mamma ! ” It was all the pitiful, childish 
lips said ; but the blue eyes full of tears finished 
the prayer. 

“ Don’t be afraid, Grade,” the lady answered, 
smiling; “she shall not go there.” Then she 
turned to newsboy No. 1. “ Here is some money 


196 MORE BED-TIME STORIES. 


for you. You can tell old Sally that the girl got 
hurt, and has been taken to the hospital. You 
had better go and let her know at once.” 

So newsboy No. 1 got down from his unwonted 
elevation, pulled again at the phantom of a 
cap, and, looking curiously at the fresh, crisp 
currency in his hand, walked away. Newsboy 
No. 2, correctly divining that nothing was to 
be gained by remaining, while, by following his 
comrade he might perhaps come in for a treat, 
let go his hold on the carriage, and went after 
the other. 

“ Now, James,” Mrs. Brierly said to the coach- 
man, “ you may drive to the Children’s Hospital, 
on Rutland Street.” 

“\Ve shall go right by home, shan’t we, mam- 
.ma?” 

“ Yes, dear.” 

“I suppose we couldn’t be a hospital, could 
we?” 

“ Not very conveniently, I think. It is better 
to help keep up a hospital outside than to turn 
our own house into one.” ’ 


RUTHY’S COUNTRY. 


197 


“ Yes’m,” Grade said, thoughtfully, “ only this 
once, when we did the hurting, I didn’t know 
hut it would he nice if we did the curing.” 

Just then, before Mrs. Brierly answered, the 
swooning girl revived, and opened for an instant 
her curious, olive-colored ej 7 es. There w^as some- 
thing in their look, perhaps, which went farther 
than Gracie’s argument. At any rate, the lady 
said, — 

“ After all, James, you may as well leave us 
at home, and go at once for Dr. Cheever.” 

In five minutes more the carriage had stopped 
before a substantial, prosperous-looking house, 
the coachman had carried the poor, suffering 
little waif upstairs in his arms, and Mrs. Bri- 
erly had summoned Mrs. Morris, the good, moth- 
erly woman who had been Gracie’s nurse, to her 
councils. 

When Dr. Cheever came, he found his patient 
in clean, pure clothes, in a fresh, lovely room, 
waiting for him with a piteous, silent patience 
which it was pathetic to see. She suffered 
cruelly from her hurt, a compound fracture of 


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the wrist, but she was not used to making moans 
or receiving sympathy ; and it would have seemed 
to her a sort of sacrilege to cry out with human 
pain in this paradise to which she had been 
brought. One could only guess at her suffering 
by her compressed lips, with the white pallor 
round them, and the dark rings about her 
eyes. 

Dr. Che ever listened to the account of the 
accident, while he dressed the poor hurt wrist 
with a gentleness which soothed the pain his 
touch caused. When he had done all he could, 
he followed Mrs. Brierly from the room. 

“ This will be an affair of several weeks,” he 
said. “ Would it not have been better to take 
the girl to one of the hospitals?” 

“ I thought so, at first ; but, as Gracie said, we 
did the hurting, and it seemed right we should 
do the healing. Besides, the child’s face inter- 
ested me strangely, and I think it will not be a 
bad thing for us to have a little experience of 
this sort.” 

Meantime Ruthy lay and looked about her, as 


RUTHY ’S COUNTRY. 


199 


we have all fancied ourselves looking when, the 
death sleep over, we shall open our eyes to a new 
morning in some one of the Father’s “many 
mansions.” To a denizen of Moonstone Court 
this peaceful spot in which Ruthy found herself 
might well seem no unworthy heaven. The 
walls were tinted a soft, delicate gray, with blue 
borderings. On the drab carpet blue forget-me- 
nots blossomed. Blue ribbons tied back the 
white muslin curtains, and all the little china 
articles for use or ornament were blue and 
gilt. 

Only one picture was in the room, and that 
hung over the mantel, directly opposite the pure 
white bed where Ruthy lay. It was a landscape 
by Gifford, — one of those glorified pictures of his 
which paint nature as only a poet sees her. 
Soft meadows sloped away into dreamy distance 
on one side, and, on the other, into the green 
enchantment of a wood a winding path beguiled 
you. In the centre, with her raised foot upon a 
stile by which she was about to cross into the 
peaceful meadows, a young girl stood with morn- 


200 


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ing in Iier eyes. Just as she raised her foot 
she had paused and turned her head to look 
over her shoulder, as if she heard a voice calling 
her, and was hesitating whether to go on her 
appointed way or back into the green wood’s 
enchantment. There w r as a wonderful suggestion 
for a story in the girl’s face, her attitude, her 
questioning eyes. But if Ruthjr felt this at all, 
it was very vaguely and unconsciously ; yet the 
picture revealed to her a new world. Some- 
where, then, meadows bloomed like these mead- 
ows, and woods were green, and light flickered 
through tender leaves, and over all the great,' 
glorious blue sky arched and smiled. Some- 
where! That must be country, — outside of the 
pavements and the tall, frowning houses. Oh, it 
she could go ! Oh, but she would go ! Let her 
wrist but get well, and then ! She had never had 
these dreams before. The vision of the country, 
the true country, had never dawned on her till 
now. And yet she must have seen pictures of it 
in the windows of print shops ; but her eyes had 
not been anointed, or Gifford had not painted 
the pictures. 


RUTIIY’S COUNTRY. 


201 


All through the quiet weeks in which her sore 
hurt was healing, she watched that painted land- 
scape, and her longing to find it grew and grew. 
But she never said a word about it. Indeed, 
she seldom spoke at all except to answer some 
question. 

Mrs. Brierly became strangely interested in her 
in spite of this silence, which piqued a’nd disap- 
pointed Grade. The child could not understand 
what the mother guessed at, — the sense of isola- 
tion which tormented Ruthy. She was among 
them, but not of them, the girl felt. She had 
been injured by an accident for which these peo- 
ple in some wise held themselves responsible, and 
so they were good to her, and gave her this 
glimpse of heaven. But they were of the chosen 
people, and she a Gentile, an outcast at their 
gates. If she could but go away from every thing 
she had ever known, and follow that winding path 
into the still wood, she should be happy. Who 
knew what she might not find there, — love, may be, 
and friends, and home, — perhaps, even, the father 
and mother who, as old Sally said, were dead ? 
Who knew? 


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One day Mrs. Brierly came in to sit with her. 
Ruthy could sit up now, and she was in a low 
rocking-chair, still facing the picture. The lady 
saw the direction of her eyes, and said, gently, — 

“ I think you must like pictures very much, 
Ruthy ?” 

The olive-colored eyes gleamed, and a flicker- 
ing flush came and went in the thin cheeks, but 
the girl answered shyly and guardedly, as her 
wont was. 

“ I don’t know, ma’am ; I have never seen any. 
I like this one. It is the country; isn’t it?” 

Mrs. Brierly smiled. 

“ Yes ; it is the country as Gifford, the man 
who made the picture, saw it. Country means 
ploughed fields and potatoes to some people, and 
paradise to others. I think you could find Gif- 
ford’s country, Ruthy.” 

The girl’s heart gave a great, sudden bound. 
That was just what she meant to do ; but she was 
silent. Soon Mrs. Brierly asked, — 

“ Do you remember your father and mother, 
Ruthy ? I think they must have been very differ- 
ent people from old Sally.” 


RUTHY’S COUNTRY. 


203 


“ Yes, ma’am, I remember my mother. Father 
died so long ago I have forgotten all about him, and 
mother and I grew poorer and poorer, until one 
day I woke up, as it seemed, from a long dream, 
with my hair all gone, and very weak ; and the 
neighbors said mother and I had both had a fever, 
and she was dead. Then Sally took me and sent 
me out to beg, until I wouldn’t beg anymore ; and 
since then I‘ve sold matches and swept crossings, 
and done any thing else I could. My wrist is get- 
ting so I can use it now, and I must go to work 
again. I am very thankful to you, ma’am. I would 
have my wrist broke twenty times to come once 
into this house and lie in this white bed, and see 
that picture. But to-morrow I shall be well 
enough to put on my own clothes again and go 
to work, and I will, please, ma’am.” 

« These are your own clothes that you have 
on, Ruthy, your very own. And here are more 
changes for you in this drawer, and here in the 
closet are your shawl and hat. You must not go 
away yet, till you are much stronger ; but when 
you do go, all these things are your own.” 


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“My very own!” It was a sort of glad cry 
which came from the girl’s quivering lips. Her 
eyes filled, and the flickering color came into her 
cheeks. Mrs. Brierly got up and went away. 
She had never heard Ruthy speak so many 
words before, and she began to feel that she 
should get to the girl’s heart in time, but she 
would not let her excite herself any more, now. 
And Ruthy sat and looked at the picture, and 
thought. 

The next morning rose bright and clear, — a 
summer morning, which had slipped away from its 
kindred and stolen on in advance to brighten the 
last week in April. Nurse Morris went first into 
Ruthy’s room, and found the little white bed empty, 
and the room empty also. She called the maid 
who had been sweeping down the steps and wash- 
ing the sidewalk, and asked if she had seen any 
one go out. No one, the girl said, but she had left 
the door unfastened while she just chatted a bit 
with Katy, next door, and some one might have 
gone, and she not know it. 

Mrs. Morris went next to Mrs. Brierly with her 


RUTHY’S COUNTRY. 


205 


tale, and Mrs. Brierly came in dressing-gown and 
slippers to look at the empty room. The hat and 
shawl she had put in the closet for Ruthy Avere 
gone, but the changes of clothes in the drawer 
Avere untouched ; and upon them lay a piece of 
paper on Avhich the girl had printed laboriously, 
in great capital letters, — 

“ I AM GOING TO FIND THE COUNTRY. I DID 
NOT TELL, FOR FEAR I WOULD NOT BE LET 
TO GO. GOD BLESS YOU, MA’AM, Tm VERY 
THANKFUL.” 

It seemed useless to try to folloAV her on her 
unknoAvn road. No one could guess in what di- 
rection she had gone. Tender-hearted little Gracie 
cried over her departure ; Mrs. Brierly felt very 
anxious and uneasy, but they could only wait. 
And it was three days before any neAVS came. It 
was brought, at last, by an odd messenger. A 
market-man stopped with his wagon before the 
house, and, ringing the bell, asked to see the 
mistress, and Avas shown upstairs. 

“ Did a young girl, sort of delicate lookin’, leave 
you lately, ma’am? ” 


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“ Yes, on Tuesday morning. Can you tell me 
any thing of her ? ” 

“ Well, you see, I get up nigh about in the mid- 
dle of the night to get things ready for market, 
and Wednesday morning I found a girl lying in a 
dead faint on my barn floor. I called my wife, 
and we brought her to, and wife asked her where 
she came from. ‘ Mrs. Brierly’s, No. 775 Tremont 
Street,’ she answered, straight enough ; and then 
she went off again, and the next time we brought 
her to there was no more sense to be got out of 
her. She just kept saying over something about 
finding the country, and ‘ it ain’t there.’ 

“ I had to corne off to market, but we carried 
her into the house, and in the middle of the fore- 
noon wife see the doctor goin’ by, and she jest 
called to him. He said it was brain fever ; and 
she don’t get any better ; and wife said I’d better 
stop at 775, and if there was a Mrs. Brierly here, 
why, I could let her know. We live at Highville, 
about fifteen miles from Boston ; and if you ask for 
Job Smith’s you’ll find my house.” 

So poor little Ruthy had walked all those lone- 


RUTHY’S COUNTRY. 


207 


some miles to find the country that Gifford saw, 
and had found, instead, pain and weariness, and 
who knew what more ? 

That day Mrs. Brierly drove out there, and took 
Nurse Morris with her; Ruthy recognized neither 
of them, and at length Mrs. Brierly drove sadly 
away, leaving Nurse Morris behind to care for the 
sick child, as busy Mrs. Job Smith, with all her 
kindliness, was unable to do. 

And after a while the fever wore itself out, and 
Ruthy, a white wraith of a girl, was carried back 
into the chamber of peace, where the country Gif- 
ford saw was hanging on the wall. But the days 
went by, and the spring came slowly up that way, 
and the young summer followed, and Ruthy was 
still a pale, white wraith, and grew no rosier and 
no stronger. 

“ Do get well, Ruthy,” loving little Gracie used 
to say, “ and well take you to find the country.” 

But Ruthy would shake her head with a sIoav, 
mournful motion, and answer, — 

“ No use, Miss Gracie, it is in the picture, but it 
ain’t anywhere else.” 


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And by and by they began to know that Ruthy 
would never go where pleasant paths led through 
the wood’s green enchantment, or peaceful mead- 
ows smiled in the summer sunshine. Sorrow and 
privation and weariness had done their work too 
well, and the little heart', that beat so much too 
fast now, would stop beating soon. But Ruthy 
was very happy. The unrest that had possessed 
her before she went to find the country was all 
over. She had tried her experiment, and found out, 
as she thought, that the true country was not to 
be reached by earthly winding ways, and she was 
content to watch it as Gifford painted it, and 
dream her silent dreams, which no one knew, as 
she watched. 

One night when Gracie bade her good-night and 
danced away, she looked after her with the old, 
wistful wonder in her eyes, and then looked up at 
Mrs. Brierly. 

“ How beautiful God can make children, ma’am. 
I think they’ll all be so, in the true country.” 
Then reaching forward she took Mrs. Brierly ’s 
hand and touched it for the first time with her 
humble, grateful lips. 


RUTHY’S COUNTRY. 


209 


“ Oh, ma’am,” she said, “ you are so dear and 
good.” 

The next morning, when they found her lying 
still, she was whiter than ever. She would never 
speak again to tell her disappointment or her joy, 
but a wonderful smile, a smile of triumph, was 
frozen on her young, wistful mouth, and Mrs. 
Brierly, looking at her, stooped to kiss Gracie’s 
tears awa} 7 , and said, — 

“Do not cry, my darling, — I think, at last, 
Ruthy has found the true country.” 


14 


JOB GOLDING’S CHRISTMAS. 


TT was very strange, thought old Job Golding, 
that he couldn’t be master of his own mind. 
He had lived a great many years, and neither re- 
morse nor memory had ever been in the habit of 
disturbing him ; but now it seemed to him as if the 
very foundations of his life were breaking up. He 
was through with his day’s work, — he had dined 
comfortably, — he satin an easy-chair, in a luxuri- 
ous room whose crimson hangings shut out the 
still cold of the December afternoon, — for the 
24th of December it was. He was all ready to 
enjoy himself. How singular that this state of 
things should remind him of a coming time when 
his life work would be all done, — even as his day’s 
work was all done now, — when he would be ready 
to sit down in the afternoon and look over the bal- 
ance sheet of his deeds. How curiously the old 
days came trooping in slow procession before him. 


JOB GOLDING'S CHRISTMAS. 


211 


His dead wife ; he had not loved her much 
when she was with him, but how vivid was his 
memory of her now ! He could see her moving 
round the house, noiseless as a shadow, never 
intruding on him, after he had once or twice an- 
swered her gruffly, ‘but going on her own meek, 
still ways, with her face growing whiter every day. 
He began to understand, as he looked back, why 
her strength had failed and she had been ready, 
when her baby came, to float out on the tide and 
let it drift her into God’s haven. She had had 
enough to eat and to drink, but he saw now that 
he had left her heart to starve. He seemed to see 
her white, still face, as he looked at it the last 
time before they screwed down the coffin lid, with 
the dumb reproach frozen on it, the eyes, that 
would never again plead vainly, closed for ever. 

He recalled how passionately the three-days-old 
baby cried in another room, just at that moment, 
moving all the people gathered at the funeral with 
a thrill of pity for the poor little motherless mor- 
sel. She was a passionate, wilful baby, all through 
her babyhood, he remembered. She wanted — 


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missed without knowing what the lack was — the 
love which her mother would have given her, and 
protested against fate with all the might of her 
lungs. But, as soon as she grew old enough to 
understand how useless it was, she had grown 
quiet, too ; just like her mother. He recalled her, 
all through her girlhood, a shy, still girl, always 
obedient and submissive, but never drawing very 
near him. Did she have tastes, he wondered — 
wants, longings ? She never told him. 

But suddenly, when she was eighteen, the old, 
passionate spirit that had made her cry so when 
she was a baby must have awakened again, he 
thought ; for she fell in love then, and married in 
defiance of his wishes. He remembered her 
standing proudly before him, and asking, — 

“ Father, do you know any thing against Harry 
Church ? ” 

“Yes,” he had answered wrathfully ; “I know 
that he is as poor as Job was when he sat among 
the ashes ; he can’t keep a wife.” 

“ Any thing else, father? ” looking him steadily 
in the eye. 


JOB GOLDING’S CHRISTMAS. 


213 


“ No, that’s enough,” he had* thundered ; “ and 
I’ll tell you, besides, that if you marry him you 
must lie in the bed you will make. My doors will 
never open to you again, never.” 

He met with a will as strong as his own that 
time. She did marry Harry Church, and went away 
with him from her father’s house. She had written 
home more than once afterwards, but he had sent 
the letters all back unopened. He wished, to-day, 
that he knew what had been in them ; whether 
she had been suffering for any thing. He won- 
dered why he had opposed the marriage so much. 
Harry Church had been a clerk in his store ; faith- 
ful, intelligent, industrious, only — poor. In that 
word lay the head and front of his offending. He, 
Job Golding, was rich, — had been rich all his life- 
time, — but what special thing had riches done for 
him ? He was an old man now, and all alone. 
“ All alone ; ” he kept saying that over and over, 
with a sort of vague self-pity. 

And all this time a message was on its way to 
him. 

He heard a ring at the door, but he went on 


214 


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with his thoughts, and did not trouble himself 
about it. Meantime, two persons had been ad- 
mitted into the hall below ; a man and a little 
girl, eight years old, perhaps. Her companion 
took off her hood and her warm wrappings, and 
the child stood there, — a dainty, delicate creature, 
— her golden curls drooping softly round her face, 
with its large blue eyes and parted scarlet lips. 
The housekeeper had come into the hall, and she 
turned pale as she saw that little face. 

“ Miss Amy’s child,” she said to the man, ner- 
vously. “It is as much as my place is worth to 
let her come in here.” 

“ You are Mrs. Osgood, are you not? ” said the 
little girl, looking at her. 

“ Hear the blessed lamb ! Who in this world 
told you there was a Mrs. Osgood?” 

“ Mamma. You loved mamma, didn’t you ? 
She said you were always so kind to her.” 

“ Loved your ma? Well, I did love her. The 
old house has never been the same since she went 
out of it.” 

“ Then you’ll let me go up alone and see 


JOB GOLDING'S CHRISTMAS. 


215 


grandpa? That is what mamma said I was to 
do.” 

Mrs. Osgood hesitated a moment, then love and 
memory triumphed over fear, and she said, — 

“ Yes, you shall. Heaven forbid I should hin- 
der you ! Go right upstairs and open the first 
door.” 

The man who had come with her sat down in 
the hall to wait, and the little figure, with its 
gleaming, golden hair, tripped on alone. 

She opened the door softly, and went in. She 
did not speak; perhaps the stern-looking old man 
sitting there awed her to silence. She just stepped 
up to him and handed him a letter. He took it, 
scarcely noticing, so busy was he with his thoughts, 
at the hand of what strange messenger. He 
looked at the outside. It was his daughter’s writ- 
ing. Ten years ago he had sent her last letter 
back unopened ; but this one, — what influence 
apart from himself moved him to read it ? It was 
not long, but it commenced with “ Dear father.” 
He had never been a dear father to her, he 
thought. 


216 


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She had waited all these silent years, she told 
him, because she was determined never to write 
to him again until they were rich enough for him 
to know that she did not write from any need of 
his help. They had passed these ten years in the 
West, and Heaven had prospered them. Her 
husband was a rich man, now ; and she wanted 
from her father only his love, — wanted only that 
death should not come between them, and either 
of them go to her mother’s side without having 
been reconciled to the other. 

“ Let her lips speak to you from the grave,” 
she wrote ; “ her lips, which you must have loved 
once, and which never grew old or lost their 
youth’s brightness, — let them plead with you to 
be reconciled to her child. Surely, you will not 
turn away from the messenger I send, — your own 
grandchild.” 

The messenger, — he had forgotten about her. 
He turned and she was standing there, like a 
spirit, on his hearthstone, with her white face 
and her gleaming golden hair. He looked at her, 
and saw her father’s broad, full brow and thought- 


JOB GOLDING’S CHRISTMAS. 


217 


ful eyes, and below them the sweetness of her 
mother’s smile. His grandchild — his! His heart 
throbbed chokingly. He grew hungry to clasp 
her, — to feel her soft arms clinging round his 
neck, her tender lips kissing away the furrows of 
his hard life from his face. But he feared to 
startle her. He tried to speak gently, — he, to 
whom gentleness was so new and strange. 

“ Come here, little girl,” he said ; and she went 
up to him fearlessly. “ Can you tell me how old 
you are, and what your name is ? ” 

“ I am eight, grandpapa, and my name is Amy.” 

Another Amy ! He felt the great sobs rising up 
from his heart, but he choked them back. 

“ What have they told you about me ? ” he 
asked her anxiously. Could it be possible, he 
wondered, that they had not taught her to hate 
him ? 

“ They always told me that you were far away 
toward where the sun rose ; and if I were good 
they would fetch me to see you some day. And 
every night I say in my prayers, ‘ God bless papa 
and mamma, and God bless grandpapa.’ ” 


218 


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“ Wliy didn't they fetch you ; what made them 
let you come alone ? ” 

“ Mamma said she would surprise you with 
your big grandchild. They are waiting at the 
hotel, and John is down-stairs. They want you 
to come back with me. Will you, grandpapa ? ” 

Mrs. Osgood looked on in wonder, as her master 
came downstairs and put on his overcoat, — came 
down holding the child’s hand in his, her golden 
hair floating beside him. Was that old Job Gold- 
ing ? 

He stepped into the carriage in which careful 
Mistress Amy had sent her messenger. The 
horses did not go fast enough. He would have 
been in a fever of impatience, but the child’s hand 
in his quieted him. Through it all he was won- 
dering vaguely what it meant, — whether he were 
his own old self, or some one else. 

At last they were there, and the child led him 
in, — up the long hotel stairs, across hall and cor- 
ridor, — until, at length, she opened a door and 
said cheerily, — 

“ Mamma, here’s grandpapa.” 


JOB GOLDING'S CHRISTMAS. 


219 


His. head swam. He was fain to sit down, and 
there were his own Amy’s arms about his neck. 
Why had he never known what he lost, in losing 
the sweetness of her love, through all these van- 
ished years ? He held her fast now, and he heard 
her voice close to his ear : — 

“ Father, are we reconciled at last ? ” 

“ I don’t know, daughter, until you’ve told me 
whether you’ve forgiven me.” 

“ There need be no talk about forgiveness,” 
she said. “ You went according to your own 
light. It is enough that God has brought us 
together again in peace. I thought that no one 
could resist my little Amy, least of all her grand- 
papa.” 

He looked up, and the child stood by, silently ; 
the firelight glittering in her golden hair, her face 
shining strangely sweet. He put out his arms and 
drew her into them, close — where no child, not 
even his own, had ever nestled before. Oh, how 
much he had missed in life ! he thought. He felt 
her clinging hold round his neck, — her kisses 
dropped upon his face like the pitying dew from 


220 


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heaven, and he — was it himself, or another soul 
in his place ? 

“ Here, father,” Amy’s voice had a cheerful 
ring to it, and her happy married life had made 
of her a fine, contented, matronly-appearing woman, 
“ here are Harry and the boys waiting to speak to 
you.” 

He shook his son-in-law’s hand heartily. Old 
feuds, old things, were over now, and all was 
become new. Then he looked at the boys, — six- 
years-old Hal, three-years-old Geordie, — brave, 
merry little fellows, of whom he should be proud 
some day ; only they could never be to him quite 
like this girl in his arms, — his first-found grand- 
child. 

He sat there among them, surrounded by the 
peace and warmth of their household love, and 
felt as if a new life had come. He did not go 
away until long after, by the rules of any well- 
ordered nursery, those three pairs of bright little 
eyes should have been closed in sleep ; but they 
must sit up to see the last of grandpapa. When, 
at length, he went, he told them that they must 


JOB GOLDING’S CHRISTMAS. 


221 


all come home to him on the morrow, — there must 
he no more staying at hotels, when his big, lone- 
some house was waiting for them. 

“ To-morrow is Christmas,” his daughter said, 
half doubtfully. 

“ All the better. If Christmas was never kept 
in my house, it ought to be. Come round to din- 
ner, — three o’clock sharp, — and bring all the 
boxes with you. That will give you time to pack 
up, and Mrs. Osgood time to get your rooms 
ready.” 

“ Boxes and boys, — won’t they be too much for 
you, father ? ” 

“When they are I’ll tell you,” — with a last 
touch of the old gruffness. 

Then he went out on the street, and began 
looking for Christmas gifts. It was new business 
for him, but he went into it earnestly and anxiously. 
It was so late, and every one seemed so busy, he 
thought it would never do to trust to the shopmen 
for sending things home. So he perambulated the 
streets like a bewildered Santa Claus, — and went 
home, at last, laden with books and toys and 


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jewels and bon-bons, — with a doll that could 
walk, and a parrot that could talk, and no end of 
sweets and confections. 

He called Mrs. Osgood to help him put them 
away, and when they were all disposed of he 
said, with a curious attempt at maintaining his old 
sternness and dignity, which caused the good 
woman a secret smile, — 

“ Mrs. Osgood, I hope you will do yourself and 
me credit to-morrow. My daughter, Mrs. Church, 
is coming home with her husband and children, 
and I want the best Christmas dinner you can get 
up, to be on the table at a quarter-past three.” 

Mrs. Osgood had always loved Miss Amy, in 
the old days, and had been hoping against hope, 
all these years, for the reconciliation which had 
come now. So her heart was in her task, and the 
dinner was a master-piece, — a real work of genius, 
as she used to say, when she told the story after- 
wards. 

Amy, and Amy’s husband, and the roystering 
boys, and, best of all, the little girl close at grand- 
papa’s side, with her happy eyes shining, and her 


JOB GOLDING’S CHRISTMAS. 


223 


golden hair gleaming, and her quiet, womanly- 
little ways, — what a jubilant party they were ! 
And among them all Job Golding saw, or fancied 
that he saw, another face, over which, almost 
thirty years ago, he had seen the grave-sod piled, 
— a face sad and wistful no longer, but bright 
with a strange glory. No one else saw her , he 
knew, for the gay laughs were going round, but 
close at his side she seemed to stand ; and he 
heard, or fancied that he heard, a whisper from her 
parted lips, which only his ear caught, — the Christ- 
mas anthem, — 

“Peace on earth and good will toward men.” 


MY COMFORTER. 


T GOT up and hung a shawl over the canary’s 
cage to keep him quiet. He had been singing 
all day, till it seemed to me I could not. bear it any 
longer. That morning the doctor had told me 
that my mother would never be any better. She 
was liable, he said, to die at any time. At the 
longest, it was only a question of days or weeks. 
And my mother was all I had in the world. 

My father had been dead a year. In his life- 
time we had lived in a pleasant country home. He 
had been employed in the county bank, and we had 
lived most comfortably, and even with some pre- 
tensions to elegance. I had been sent to school, and 
learned a little French, a little music, and some- 
thing of art. I had, too, a great deal of skill in 
fancy work, and had been used to find in that and 


MY COMFORTER. 


225 


my painting my amusements. Indeed, we all had 
what are called elegant tastes, — tastes which suited 
a much larger income than ours, and we indulged 
them. This was unwise, perhaps. People said so, 
at any rate, when my father died suddenly, and 
left us with no property and no dependence save 
our home. 

It was to escape alike their censure and their 
pity, as much as because I fancied I could find 
more openings for employment, that I persuaded 
mother to join me in selling our little place, and 
remove to New York. She was willing enough to 
do this. I think that it was a relief to her to go 
away from all the familiar sights and sounds which 
kept so constantly before her the memory of the 
dead husband who had made her life among them 
so blessed. She fancied, perhaps, that when she 
was among unfamiliar things the first bitterness of 
her grief would wear away. But with her, as it 
proved, change of place was only change of pain. 
She was not made of the stuff to which forget- 
fulness is possible. 

Our home and furniture brought us a little over 
15 


226 


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three thousand dollars, and with this sum we went 
to New York. In spite of my mourning for my 
father I had the elasticity of youth, and I did not 
make this removal, enter into this wide, strange, 
new life, without my share of the high hopes and 
brilliant anticipations of youth. 

We went first to a hotel, and then looked up 
a boarding-place in a quiet, unpretentious street, 
suited to our means. We expected to use two or 
three hundred dollars before we got well estab- 
lished ; and then I hoped to earn eifough to 
keep us, with the help of the interest of the 
three thousand we should still have remaining, 
without encroaching upon the principal. I might 
have succeeded, perhaps, — for I was not long in 
procuring fancy work from two fashionable trim- 
ming stores, — if, when we had been there a little 
while, my mother’s health had not begun seriously 
to decline. I think she made an effort to live on, 
after all the joy of her life was dead, for my sake ; 
but she failed,, and by and by she grew weary and 
gave up the struggle. 

Of course her illness brought upon us new ex- 


MY COMFORTER 


227 


penses. T would have for her the best medical 
advice, however she might protest against it as 
useless ; and there were various little comforts and 
luxuries that I could not and would not deny 
myself the pleasure of procuring for her. So we 
were gradually going behindhand all the time. 
This had troubled me a little ; but now that the 
doctor had spoken my mother’s doom, the matter 
of dollars and cents faded into, utter insignificance. 
There would be more than enough to take care of 
her to the last, and after that I could not bring 
myself to think. I would have shuddered at the 
thought of self-destruction, but I believe the prayer 
was in my mind, every moment in the day, that 
God would let me care for her till the end, and 
then lie down and die beside her. So I carried 
back the work I had from Richmond’s and La 
Pierre’s, and spent all my time with her, — my 
darling. 

Often when I tried to talk with her, the thought 
how soon she would be past all hearing would rise 
up and choke me, and I would turn away to hide 
the sudden rush of tears. It was on Wednesday 


228 


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the doctor had told me what I must expect ; and 
up to Saturday night I had kept it from her, try- 
ing my poor best to wear a cheerful face. That 
night I sat beside her in the twilight. She was on 
the lounge, bolstered up with pillows, and I on a 
low hassock, which brought my face on a level 
with hers. We had been silent a long time, since 
the last ray of sunset touched our western windows, 
and now the dusk had fallen so that we could see 
each other no longer. At last out of the shadows 
came her voice, clear and sweet, — 

“ Beyond the sowing and the reaping, 

Beyond the watching and the weeping. 

Beyond the waking and the sleeping, 

I shall be soon.” 

Then she put out her hand and touched my wet 
face. 

“ Do not grieve, my darling,” she said, — oh, how 
tenderly, — “ because I am going home. The onlv 
pang I feel is for you, and it will not be long before 
you come.” 

“It may be years,” I said, bitterly. “I am 
young and strong. Oh, I wish I wasn’t, — if God 


MY COMFORTER. 


229 


would only take me too, and not make me stay in 
this great, empty world without you ! ” 

“ I think, darling, He will send you a com- 
forter.” 

“ Oh, I am not so had that I do not want His 
Spirit. I do believe ; I do try to follow the dear 
Lord ; but I want a human comforter, — something 
to see and feel, — tender lips, gentle fingers. The 
flesh is so weak.” 

“ And I meant a human comforter. I believe 
He will send you one in His own time and way, — 
when you learn, perhaps, to forget yourself in 
helping some one still more desolate.” 

“ As if that could be. O, mother, when you are 
gone there won’t be in the whole wide world such 
a lonesome, aching heart as mine/’ 

“ People always say that, dear ; always think 
there is no sorrow like their sorrow, until God 
teaches them better, either by making their own 
burden heavier, or by showing them how to help 
some one else. God grant it may be this last with 
you, Bessie.” 

“But is there no hope, mother ? ” I said, with 


280 


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a wild longing for a little of the comfort a doubt 
would give. 

“ I think none. Dr. West told you so Wednes- 
day, did he not ? and you have been trying to keep 
it from me, — as if I could not read it in your face, 
every time you looked at me.” 

All reserve broke down then. I was in her 
arms, sobbing and crying on her bosom ; I that so 
soon would have no mother’s bosom for my refuge 
any more for ever. 

The doctor had said her life was a question of 
days or weeks. She lived four weeks after he told 
me that, and then one night she talked with me a 
long, long time. At last she said she was tired, 
and would go to sleep. Then she kissed me, as she 
always did, and turned her gentle face toward the 
wall. She awoke again in another world than oars. 
But by the calm blessedness of the smile on the 
dead face I knew that her soul had departed in 
peace. It was a smile that made her young and 
fair again, as the mother I remembered away back 
in my childhood. 

Oh, what a desolate funeral that was ! I had no 


MY COMFORTER. 


231 


friends near enough to give them any claim to he 
sent for, and I wanted no one. I made all the 
arrangements myself, and the third day I buried 
my dead. I remember the minister, after the 
funeral rites were over, stopped a moment beside 
the grave to speak a few words of sympathy to 
me, sole mourner. But I was deaf with sorrow. I 
made no answer, and presently he turned away. 
I don’t know how long I stood there. After a 
while my driver came up, touching his hat, re- 
spectfully, and asked, — 

“Would ye plaise to start soon, miss?” and 
mechanically I went toward the carriage, and he 
put me in and shut the door. So I went back to 
the desolate room where she had died. 

Some one had been in during my absence and 
made it all bright and tidy, but I would rather 
have found it dark, and gloomy, and comfortless, 
as when I went away. The days which followed 
Were sad and evil. My soul rose in revolt. I 
asked why I, of all others, should be so set apart 
by sorrow, — left so lonely and so desolate. For 
a whole week I had been thus mutinous. I had 


232 


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seen in my God no Father, but an Avenger. All 
the promises of love and joy were sealed from 
me. I passed through the very valley and shadow 
of death, and in its darkness the powers of evil did 
battle for my soul ; until at last 1 slept, one night, 
and dreamed of mother, for the first time since she 
died. In the dreitm she seemed beside me, but not 
as of old. A spiritual beauty sat upon her face, 
a blessedness such as mortals never know looked 
from her eyes, but her voice came, low and sweet, 
as it used : “ I think, darling, the Father will send 
you a comforter.” 

I woke refreshed, as I had not been before by 
any slumber. The voice of my dream lingered 
with me, and calmed me, as my mother’s words 
used to. I began to have faith. I remembered 
how she had thought my comforter was to come. 
But when and where should I find some one more 
desolate than myself to help ? At any rate, not 
by sitting still to nurse my woe, an idler in the 
vineyard. I must go to work. 

I put on my deep mourning bonnet and went 
out. If I could get my old work from the trim- 


MY COMFORTER. 


233 


ming stores, I could earn enough now to take care 
of myself, and keep what money I had left as 
surety against the proverbial rainy day. I made 
my way first to Richmond’s. As I went in I 
noticed a little lame girl with her crutch sitting 
beside the door. One sees such objects of charity 
often enough in New York. I doubt if this one 
would have attracted me but for her singular 
beauty. She had the fairest skin I ever saw, with 
large, dark eyes, and hair of a pure auburn tint. 
It was a face full of contrasts, and yet of the most 
exquisite loveliness. I noticed she attracted others 
as well as myself, for while I stood a few moments 
looking at her, no one went into the store who 
did not drop a few pennies in the little outstretched 
hand. I followed the universal example as I went 
in, and at my gift, as at every other, a deep blush 
crimsoned the sensitive little face. 

I made my arrangements to resume my old em- 
ployments, and then went out, and down the street 
to La Pierre’s. When I came back, half an hour 
later, the child was still sitting there ; and I looked 
at her again, wondering anew at her delicate 


284 


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beauty. Then a thrill of compassion warmed my 
heart for the poor little waif. It was a cold day 
in the autumn, and she was very thinly clad ; sit- 
ting, poor little morsel, upon the cold stone, too 
lame, it seemed, to move about and warm herself, 
even if she wished ; evidently, too, ashamed and 
miserable over her occupation. I went up to her 
and spoke to her. 

“ What is your name ? ” 

“ Jennie Green.” 

“Whose little girl are you?” 

“Nobody’s, ma’am.” 

Oh, perhaps I should not have understood the 
wail of sadness in those words if I, too, had not 
been nobody’s girl. 

“ Have you no friends ? ” I asked, putting my 
question in a new form. 

“ No, ma’am. Mother died last spring, and I’ve 
had no friends since.” 

“ But you live somewhere ? ” 

“Oh, yes ; there was a woman in the next room 
to mother, and she took me when mother died, 
and every day she sends me out like this, and she 
takes the money I get to pay for my keeping.” 


MY COMFORTER. 


235 


“ Do you like to live with her ? ” I pursued, get- 
ting strangely interested. 

A quick shudder of repugnance answered me 
before her words, — 

“ Oh, no, no ! ” 

A sudden impulse moved me. I beckoned to a 
policeman who stood near by watching us. 

“ Do you know any thing of this child ? ” I in- 
quired. 

“ Not much. She seems a quiet, well-disposed 
young one. A woman brings her here, a pretty 
rough customer, and leaves her here, and comes 
back after her toward night. I’ve seen her use 
her pretty hard, sometimes.” 

“ That woman is no relation to her,” I said, 
“ only a person in the house, that kept her when 
her mother died, — to make money out of her, I 
suppose. Would it be against any law if I took 
her home with me, without letting any one know 
where she was gone, and took care of her ? Could 
that woman claim her again ? ” 

The policeman whistled, by which token prov- 
ing himself Yankee born, and considered a moment. 
Then he answered, deliberately, — 


236 


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“ No, it ain’t agin no law, as I knows of. I don’t 
think the woman would dare to take her from you, 
and ’tain’t likely any one would disturb you. All 
I’m thinking on is, — you’re young, miss, — would 
your folks like it, and wouldn’t you get tired on 
her?” 

“ I have no folks,” I said, with the old sadness 
rising up and choking me. “ Will you kindly call 
a carriage, and put her in ? ” 

I had given my direction without at all consult- 
ing the child. When he was gone for the hack I 
went up to her and asked her if she would go home 
with me, and have it for her home. 

“ Do you mean me to leave Mrs. McGuire ? ” 
she cried, with wide eyes. 

“ Yes, if you want to.” 

“ And not — not come out for money any 
more ? ” 

u Not, please God, while I have strength to work 
for us both.” 

“ Oh, I do want to go, I do ! ” she cried, wild with 
eagerness. And then she drew her little crutch 
toward her, and painfully raised herself and stood 
there waiting. 


MY COMFORTER. 


237 


“ Oh, can’t we go now? ” she asked, in an eager 
whisper. “ It’s almost time for Mrs. McGuire.” 

Just then the carriage came up to the sidewalk, 
and I carried my poor little foundling home. 


Yesterday was the anniversary of my dear 
mother’s death, and I lived over again the old 
sorrow, tasted its bitterness anew. I laid my head 
on the pillow where she died, and sobbed out the 
passion of desolation which swept over me. And 
as I lay there crying I heard gentle footsteps, and 
then felt soft lips on my cheek, and heard a 
voice, — 

“ Oh, can’t I comfort you, Miss Bessie ? Can’t 
I do any thing for you, now you’ve made my life 
all new and bright ? ” 

And I opened my arms, and took into them my 
little dark-eyed, bright-haired girl, and realized 
that God indeed had sent me my comforter, — a 
comforter found, as my mother had predicted, 
when I forgot myself in trying to comfort one yet 
more desolate. 


238 


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I should never have dared to act upon the im- 
pulse which led me to bring the child home, had 
I been less utterly alone in the world. But I have 
never regretted it. I found that her parents had 
brought her up in the fear of God, and all the rude 
and rough associations, which had worked their 
worst on her after her mother’s death, had never 
soiled her innate purity. My care and tenderness 
have made of her all I hoped. Dr. West’s skill 
has almost cured her lameness, and she walks with- 
out a crutch now, and with only the slightest sug- 
gestion of a limp. She helps me at my tasks, and 
for her sake I have recalled my old pencil craft, 
and here I foresee that the pupil is soon to surpass 
her teacher ; and some day I fancy you may see on 
the walls of the academy a picture by a girl artist 
with brown eyes and auburn hair, — the child 
who was my comforter. 


Cambridge : Press of John Wilson aud Son. 


Messrs . Roberts Brothers' Publications 


BED-TIME STORIES. 

BY 

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ADDIE LEDYARD. 

Square i6mo. Price $1.50. 

“Mrs. Moulton’s ‘Bed-time Stories’ are tender and loving, as the last 
thoughts of the day should be. They are told simply and sweetly. All of them 
teach unselfishness, faithfulness, and courage. ‘What Jess Cotrell did,’ and 
‘ Paying off Jane,’ are perhaps the best ; although ‘ Mr Turk, and what became 
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inclined to give it the first place. The stories are not for very young children, but 
for those old enough to think for themselves ; and the influence they exert will be 
pure, gentle, and decidedly religious. The dedication is very graceful.” — Boston 
Daily A dvertiser. 

“It is long years since we were a lad ; but, as we have read these tales, we have 
dreamed ourself a boy again, have exulted with some of the young heroes and 
heroines of Mrs. Moulton’s coinage, and have wept sweet tears with others, just 
as, we have no doubt, many a boy and girl will do who takes our advice and secures 
this delightful budget of stories out of their first savings. Parents, who appreciate 
the difficulty of providing suitable reading for young people when they are at 
the doubtful age which Burns describes as being ‘’twixt a man and a boy,’ will 
find Mrs. Moulton one of the most graceful and thoughtful purveyors of an elevated 
literature, especially adapted to the wants and tastes of their bright-eyed and quick- 
witted sons and daughters.” — Christian Intelligencer. 

“ Very delicately and prettily are these stories for children told. . . . Chil- 
dren, the kindest and sharpest of critics, will willingly read them too. And not on 
the other side of the Atlantic only, but on this, and in every land where the English 
language is spoken. Real stories these for real children, not namby-pamby, teachy- 
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In Preparation . 

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Afessrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications 


WHAT ICATY DID. 


By SUSAN COOLIDGE. 

Author of “ The New Year’s Bargain.” With Illustrations, 
by Addie Ledyard. One vol. Square i6ino. Cloth. 
Price $150. 

From the Lady's Book. 

“ The New Years Bargain” was one of our pleasantest juvenile books for the 
la3t holidays. Now we have by the same author a story of child-life so natural and 
so charming that the authoress has fairly earned a foremost place among her class. 
It takes a great deal to write a good story for children. Women who think it easy, 
and sit down with a stock of platitudes and worn-out incidents, always fail mis- 
erably. This book tells “ What Katy Did” in a way that will make all its readers 
long to hear about her again. 

From the Christian Register. 

It must have been with a smile of rare complacency that Roberts Brothers 
sent forth such a brace of volumes as Susan Coolidge’s “What Katy Did” and 
Miss Alcott’s “ Shawl-Straps.” Not only will the children “cry for them,” but 
the grown-up people will laugh over them until they too shall have tears in their 
eyes. Two books so bright, wise, and every way delightful, are seldom given to 
the public at once by a single firm. 

From the Womans Journal. 

Since “ Little Women” we have not seen a more charming book than this for 
children. It possesses the crowning merit of all story books, — that of being per- 
fectly natural without becoming tedious. The author has the happy gift of know- 
ing what to leave out ; and describes the amusing or sorrowful incidents of child- 
life in the pleasantest manner, while unobtrusively instilling lessons of courtesy, 
patience, and kindness. Illustrations by Addie Ledyard add to the attractions of 
the story. 

From the Buffalo Courier. 

None who take it up will want it to leave their hands until they reach the last 
page. As to the author, she is one of the few lucky mortals who know how to 
write for the little ones, — and that is saying a great deal. 


From Hearth and Home. 

The author of that delightful book, “The New Year’s Bargain,” has prepared 
another rare treat for her young friends. It is a story of child-life ; and is so 
perfect in its delineations, so sweet and tender at times, and again so irresistibly 
funny, that it starts both tears and laughter. ^ ^ 


Sold everywhere. Mailed , postpaid, by the Publisher s t 


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